


Bygone

by TaraSoleil



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Attraction, Convoluted Family Trees, Einstein-Rosen Bridge, F/M, Flirting, History Geek Darcy!, SCIENCE!, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Wormholes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:31:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 50,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4275321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraSoleil/pseuds/TaraSoleil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with a box, a super sweet coat and a wormhole.<br/>Now Darcy Lewis is stuck relying on Howard 'Grabby Hands' Stark in her efforts to get home.<br/>Sometimes science sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Inauspicious Beginnings

It started with a box.

It wasn’t even a large box. Darcy had just moved from London, packed everything she owned into three boxes large enough for her to curl up inside with her tablet and a cup of coffee – she knows, because she totally did. By comparison, this box was tiny. It was designed for files, she assumed, but it was old. The white of the cardboard was faded and stained; the tape that held the lid shut was disintegrating into powder. The label across the top was unreadable.

“What’s that? Something to science with?” she questioned as she dropped her bag and coffee onto the pristine stainless steel counter of the lab.

“Huh? What? No,” said Jane absently, her face still pointed at the computer monitors.

“If it’s not for science, why is it here?” she asked. It was a question she often wondered of herself. She was a political science major, an unfinished one at that. Her skills, while not inconsiderable, had little uses in a lab. Stark or Pepper or whoever was in charge of HR seemed to realize as much; on the employment contract she had been given to sign, her official title named her a ‘personal assistant’. Really it just meant that she was a herder of scientists, ensuring the brainiacs slept, ate, and, oh sweet merciful gods above, _bathed_ at regular intervals, none of which they would have done when in the throes of scientific breakthroughs. She was always amazed at how little difference there was between geniuses and her obsessive, ADD brother, Bing, who would sit before a television for days on end forgoing sleep, food and – in one particularly horrifying incident that resulted in his Nintendo being thrown from the window – toilet breaks; all in pursuit of the best possible score at Mario Kart or whatever his new obsession was.

“Huh?” Jane said again, this time turning around to face her friend and assistant. “Oh, the box. DUM-E brought it over. Stark seemed to think it might have some uses in my research.”

At the mention of its name, the questionably intelligent robot whirred to life and propped its arm on Darcy’s shoulder in what she had come to recognize as a hug. “Hey, Big D,” she greeted and gave the arm a pet, sending the machine to drone in a way that sounded way too much like a cat purring.

“Apparently, Stark’s father had done some theorizing on building wormholes back during the war,” she said, paying little attention to the common sight of DUM-E snuggling up to her assistant; it happened almost daily. Instead, she cut the last of the tape away from the box, lifting the lid and releasing a nauseating combination of mothball and too-strong perfume.

Batting the stench away, Darcy looked down at what was unmistakably a ladies coat. “I didn’t know Tony’s dad was so inclined. At least he had good taste,” she commented as she lifted both the coat and a perfectly manicured eyebrow.

Foster shook her head, smile pulling at her mouth. “It probably belonged to his assistant. Her name was Lewis, too, funnily enough. Maria Lewis.”

Darcy nodded. They’d already gone through all this months ago when they first settled into the lab, when Stark still bothered to visit.

From what she was told by the other assistants at lunch and in the corridors, the man was a nuisance, popping into every laboratory unannounced, claiming that as the purveyor of money and super-sweet and shiny equipment he was entitled to first dibs on poking or exploding any and all of their creations. After their first week in the Avenger’s Tower, however, Stark had not set foot inside their lab. He visited all those around them with irritating frequency, but not theirs. Jane assumed it was because most of her work was theoretical at this point, but Darcy had other another idea why; one even she was not about to voice.

That first week had been great. She and Stark were two of a kind, if you discounted the brown eyes, genius intellect and billion-dollar bank account on his part and the blue eyes and killer rack on hers. They clicked. They laughed at the same jokes and were finishing each other’s sentences after the first day. Jane had gotten so annoyed, she questioned if Darcy was actually his illegitimate child.

At that, Stark had pulled a face, not one of disgust but contemplation. He eyed Darcy in a way that had nothing to do with admiring her not inconsiderable charms, then began to quiz her on her entire life history and family tree. The only known commonalities that they could determine on that initial interview were the names Maria and Lewis.  His mother’s name was Maria, which was also her middle name. His mother’s maiden name had been Lewis. They were both common enough that it was hardly worth swooning over. Her own attempts at genealogical research for a high school project had turned out countless Lewises across the country, none of whom were related to her.

Stark disappeared after that, returning to the lab only once more that first week. His previous casual manner gone and replaced by stilted conversation, stiff spine and eyes pointed determinately away from her.

Darcy had started to think he had gone on to do further research or even some clandestine DNA scans, found that he had actually fathered one Darcy Maria Lewis. It was strange to think that she might be an unwitting heiress, that the man she knew as her father was not connected to her genetically, that the doting Lewis grandparents she visited in Miami every Passover were not hers. That she wasn’t Jewish, which meant she could eat bacon (Win!).

It was all a stupid idea because she looked so like her father it was disturbing, and either of her brothers could be spotted in a crowd as being related to her with their blue eyes and freakishly pale skin – both inherited from their father, Milton J. Lewis.

Back to the box and all the trouble the seemingly innocent thing would cause.

Beneath the coat were files, which Jane tore into eagerly. Her own research on controlled wormholes had stagnated. Thor had proved such a thing was possible. But, while he was happy to help where he could, he had no way to explain precisely and in scientific terms how the Bifrost had been able to create and maintain a portal across the galaxy. So Jane was left to her own ideas, which were proving maddeningly unhelpful. The infusion of some new thoughts, even if they had originated back in the 1940s, might be just what she needed to get her science on.

“Check this out!” Darcy said as she held the coat up. “Does this scream Darcy Lewis or what?”

“Looks more like Maria Lewis,” Jane commented.

“Oh come on,” she sniffed, trying her damnedest to ignore the horrible smell coming off it. “Look at it.” It was gorgeous. A sable collar made before people bothered to care about animal welfare (so it was grandfathered, right?), that lead to a body of buttery soft leather in a shade barely darker than white. It was darted and belted and fabulous beyond measure.

She slid it on and fastened the leather-covered buttons, dancing with joy when it fit as if it were tailored for her – boobs and all. “I am so keeping this.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” the other woman replied distractedly, eyes glued to the file. “Will you look at this. This is brilliant” She flipped between pages, following the hand-written notes across four different pages. “Howard Stark was amazing.”

Darcy glanced at the papers, saw the page filled with line after line of equations stuffed with Greek letters and square roots, and could only nod. “Yeah, that’s hella sciencey.”

“That’s hella _perfect_ ,” Jane corrected. “It’s what I’ve been missing. This formula is almost complete. Howard Stark was so close to creating his own Einstein-Rosen Bridge. And in 1947! Can you image what the world might be like if he had succeeded? We could have travelled to the moon instantly and before that decade was out. We could have travelled to Asguard!”

She really didn’t want to bring up the idea of the clean-cut young men of McCarthy Era America turning up on Odin’s doorstep. That would not have gone well. So she just agreed, “Cool.”

Jane spun around and started plugging Stark Senior’s equation into her own, muttering and ‘oohing’ in the same way Darcy did over her favorite Instagram feeds. Thinking of that, she pulled her phone from her bag, holding it at arm’s length and snapping photo after photo of her sweet new coat.

“Darcy, attach the spectrometer,” Jane called from behind a piece of equipment that Darcy had taken to calling Luke because she couldn’t remember the proper scientific name for it.  She knew it focused light (like a lightsaber!), but so far it had just been used to put their coffee on.

“Yep,” she said, pulling the wires free and plugging each one into the correct port. All those years setting up Bing’s game consoles provided her with a rather valuable skill set; she had the spectrometer up and running inside a minute.

Jane muttered and double checked her settings and readings while Darcy snapped a couple more pictures. She should have been paying attention. She should have been doing her job, assisting and making sure Jane had thoroughly checked her math before attempting to science something as potentially dangerous as a wormhole. She should have called Bruce in to assist or any of the other R&D brainiacs working on their floor, but she was too excited about the coat.

She was still taking photos when Jane set the program running, pouting at the camera as the machines began to hum. Luke sprang to life, its eight lenses shifting into their assigned locations according the equation, drawing power from the wires Darcy had connected and focusing it into a blinding pinpoint of light from which all things were possible, at least according to Jane and Erik.

Darcy, of course, saw none of it. She was too busy deciding which filter to use – sepia or grainy. Ooh, or black and white. Classic.

She frowned as she studied the coat’s details on the screen of her phone, the oddity of its placement suddenly striking her sartorially addled brain.

“Hey, Jane, why would he have put the coat in the box?” she questioned as she turned as saw the tunnel spreading from the point of light Luke had created. “Oh, shit.”

“Darcy, move!” Jane cried, her fingers stabbing hard on the keyboard, altering commands and changing nothing.

Despite her keyboard jockeying, the wormhole kept growing, spreading out like ripples in a pond, reaching out toward Darcy. She felt the first touch just as she heard Jane’s command, too late. All of it too late. The tunnel was bright, so much light, every color and wavelength and more that a human eye could never hope to see. It blinded her, kept her from seeing Jane racing for the wires to kill the power. As it touched her, she could hear it, like a roar of traffic on a bustling boulevard. Strange that a wormhole would sound like horns honking and bells ringing. Strange that it would smell like gas fumes and garbage. Strange that it would feel like a sunny day.

The wormhole shrunk down to nothing in an instant, leaving Darcy blinking spots from her eyes.

“Dammit, Jane! Give me some warning next time!” she complained, forcing her eyes to remain open.

Her vision returned too slowly. The polished glass and steel laboratory looked oddly dingy. The traffic sounds of the wormhole still hung about her, though she knew the bridge had collapsed in on itself. She shifted her weight to lean on the counter she knew to be behind her, but stumbled back when only empty air met her hip.

“Watch where you’re going!” a woman griped and shoved past her.

Darcy froze, eyes still enormous.

The last of the spots fell from her vision and she saw all the things she had heard and felt through the wormhole – cars and buses commuting a city street, gutters littered with trash, on a sunny day. It was impossible. She’d been eighty-five stories off 58th Street not two seconds ago, now she was down on the sidewalk.

“Dude!” She spun around, ready to race through security and back up to tell Jane that it had worked, but staggered to a stop. “Well, shit.”

Avengers Tower. 

It was gone.

 


	2. First Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy travels to The World of Tomorrow!

She might not be a genius inventor or an astrophysicist, but Darcy knew when something was not right. And there was no way in hell that Jane's dinky little wormhole had managed to swallow up ninety-three stories of steel, glass and a couple thousand square feet of Macassar Ebony flooring – totally worth the expense, that stuff made for the best damn sock slides Darcy had ever performed.

No, the Tower couldn’t have gone. Which mean that _she_ had gone. But where?

She spun around, searching for some street sign or monstrous billboard to clue her in. There was an enormous Coca-Cola sign, but that wasn’t much help. No, some of the buildings were familiar from around the Tower, but others were wrong, too short and shabby to belong in Stark’s neighborhood. She started walking toward the intersection, knowing the street signs would tell her what she needed to know. If she was lucky she’d only travelled a couple blocks. She had lived in New York a few months now, venturing out from the Tower on lunch and coffee runs, so she knew the surrounding blocks fairly well. Plus the grid layout made the city relatively easy to navigate. She could totally make her way back to 58th and Broadway.

“Fifty-eight and Broadway,” she said dully, looking at the street signs.

Her eyes looked back to the spot where she had been standing, then back to the signs above her.

She was in the right place.

“Well, shit,” she said again.

She dug into the pocket of Maria Lewis’s coat, pushing past some papers to reach her phone. It still showed her posing, the start of the wormhole forming behind shoulder. She swiped the picture away angrily and dialed Jane, waiting for the call to connect. Nothing happened. The phone behaved as if it had no signal at all, but there wasn’t a millimeter of ground in this city that did not get some form of cell signal.

“What the hell?”

Internet was down, too.

She scowled at the useless piece of technology. Never before had her phone failed her. It was a lifeline, a godsend, the thing that made life worth living, and it had let her down.

So what did that leave?

“Hey,” Darcy called, grabbing the attention of a man hurrying past. “Where are we?”

The man gave her a look and pointed to the street signs that had already proven as useless as her phone. “Can’t you read?”

“Yeah, I can. I was in Avengers Tower five minutes ago.”

“Avenge—What? I ain’t got time for some daffy dame,” the man muttered and continued on his hurried way.

 _Daffy_? _Dame_? Who the hell talked like that?

Must be an actor practicing his role in some gangster play, she decided.

Minutes passed as she stood and stared up at the signs, waiting for them to change or for some answer to come to her. When neither happened, she huffed and stomped away toward Columbus Circle. She ate lunch there on occasion; it got her away from the Tower and reminded her that not everyone in the world was a superhero or a genius, which boosted her self-esteem considerably. As she approached the park, though, it was clear that this visit would not leave her feeling so optimistic about life or herself.

The park itself didn’t look all that different. The monuments and trees stood as they always did, but, instead of children running and old men playing chess, there was a small crowd clustered around a man in a dull grey suit. He stood on a wooden crate with an upside down ad for soap on it – a soapbox, an honest-to-fucking-god _soapbox_. He was giving a speech about something, violence and war by the sounds of it. The men around him cheered occasionally, but mostly they nodded solemnly and once at the mention of ‘Japs’ they hissed.

Who said Japs anymore? she wondered.

Probably the same people who say daffy dames, she answered.

What the hell is going on?

She dropped onto an empty bench, glaring her frustration at the trees, the people, the newspaper at her feet. Newspaper? Did people still read those?

Her hands were reaching for the crumpled paper before she thought to stop herself. She flattened the wrinkles against her leg, studying the front page as she did. The pictures were in black and white, grainy and about as far from HD as it was possible to get, still they told a story, and not a happy one. The headline was bold and equally as jarring: **_Dutch Strike Against Nazi War Machine_**.

Daffy dame. Japs. Nazis.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck,” Darcy breathed the word out quietly, ripping the paper open for some proof that she was wrong, that it was an elaborate and totally not-in-the-least-bit-funny joke that Tony had spent months and a couple thousand dollars to pull off. But there was no ‘Ha! Fooled you!’ inside the paper, just page after page dated April 30, 1943.

She tore the phone from her pocket, certain it would work this time around. She slid the bar to unlock it and saw her worst nightmares at the top of the screen. No signal. No WiFi. No Gs – not 4 or even 3.

Of course. It’s 1943. A G means money here, not data coverage.

She pushed the phone back into her pocket, feeling again the paper inside. Brows folding together in confusion of it all, she pulled the paper loose. It was a newspaper clipping carefully folded. She opened it and read the article, which promised readers awe-inspiring sights at the World Exposition of Tomorrow, including a special presentation at the Stark Industries pavilion.

Stark!

Tony.

No.

If it really was 1943, and Darcy hated to admit that it might actually be, that meant the Stark she needed was Tony’s father, Howard.

She read the article again, but it offered no further information except that the Expo was at Flushing Meadows. That was in Queens. She was in Manhattan. She dug through her pockets and found a couple dollars and a dime, definitely not enough for a cab ride. Subway, then. She ran through the park the toward 59th Street entrance. She ran around the walking path once, twice, three times before the stitch in her side kept her from running any further.

It wasn’t there. There was supposed to be a subway entrance at the north end of the circle, but it wasn’t there.

1943\. It probably hadn’t been built yet, she reminded herself.

She groaned as she realized that she would be walking all the way to Queens. And that she had no idea how to actually get there. And that she had left her coffee back in Janes lab. And that the nearest Starbucks wouldn’t open for another thirty or so years. She fell onto a bench for a moment of well-deserved wallowing, glowering down at the article rumpled in her hand. As she glared, she saw something new. There was writing on it.

The pencil marks had faded over time, but she could make out the words if she squinted at it.  They were directions. Walking direction.

Not much caring why there was a note in Maria Lewis’s pocket directing her to The World Expo by foot from her exact location in Columbus Circle, Darcy started walking, following the hand-written notes all the way across the East River and into Queens, finding her way to Flushing Meadow. Along the way, it became quite clear to Darcy that this was not a long-planned and well-executed prank against her. The details were too real, whole buildings gone, whole _blocks_ and roads with their sidewalks and Subway entrances gone.

Three long hours she walked. That was more exercise than she had ever been made to get in her life.

“Howard Stark better be as brilliant as Jane said,” she muttered as she staggered to a stop at the entrance to The World Exposition of Tomorrow.

She paid the entrance fee, a staggering ten cents, and followed behind a group of people as they marveled their way through ‘the future’. It was hilarious, like the old cartoons they used to put on TV early in the morning when they thought no one was awake to see them but they had to put something on to make the advertisers happy.

“Oh, look, the Stark Pavillion!” a girl before her cried, giggling with her friend as they speculated if they’d get to meet the man himself. “I hear he’s only here for the week.”

Well, lucky me, Darcy thought, with absolutely no sarcasm at all.

Now, Jane never fully appreciated the skills Darcy brought to the table. She wasn’t a scientist, true, but she was really good at other things – making pancakes, Mario Kart, sucker punches and picking locks, among other things. The Lewis boys were always good for teaching her something they thought every girl ought to know. She had once helped her brother break into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to reclaim his most treasured possession – a first issue Star Wars comic signed by George Lucas. Darcy had picked the lock, Bing fielded the girl’s dog and Ben made a run for the comic. Totally worth it in Ben’s opinion.

She eyed the stage and a smile pulled at her lips. “Too easy.”

She slid into a crowd, using them as cover to jump the knee wall and duck behind the towering Art Deco proscenium, which hid a door. She gave the knob a try, laughing when it turned and the door opened.

“I think I might like the 1940s,” she muttered and slid inside, shutting it without a sound and sneaking down a dim corridor.

There were voices coming from a room to her right, women chatting and laughing. With her ear pressed to the door, she could almost make out what they were saying; she swore she caught someone saying ‘Howard’.

“You the replacement?” a gruff voice demanded, making her squeak and reach for the Taser she didn’t have. The owner of the voice was almost as wide as he was tall, which wasn’t saying much because he was barely an inch taller than her. He looked her up and down, scowling. “You’re late.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry ‘bout that,” she replied, trying not to sound as if she had no idea what was going on. After so many years of dealing with Jane, she sounded pretty damn convincing.

The fireplug of a man rapped on the door by her head. “You decent?”

“That depends who’s askin’!” a girl called back.

“They’re decent,” he said and pushed the door open. The four girls in the room stopped talking, all turning to stare at Darcy and her escort. They all looked identical save for their hair color.

“New girl,” he explained to the girls before gesturing her forward, pointing as he spoke. “Costume’s there. It stays here at the end of the night, no exceptions. You go home with the boss, costume still stays here. ‘at’s your mirror.”

“Cool,” Darcy replied confidently. “I’ll get gussied up.”

“You do that,” he said, eying her again and shaking his head as he left.

“That coat is divine,” a girl cried and brushed the fur. “Where did you get it?”

“Belongs to a friend,” Darcy said as she slipped it off. A disapproving murmur rolled through the room at the sight of her baggy sweater and skinny jeans. So not 1940s-approved.

The blonde sneered at her boots and jeans. “You a shit-kicker or somethin’?”

“Huh?”

“A farmer.”

 “Yeah, sorry, I…” she scrambled for a reason to be wearing jeans, or any form of pants for that matter. All she knew about the ‘40s came from old movies and what little she could remember from high school history class. Blondie had said ‘farmer’. Didn’t they have victory gardens during the war? Yes! They did! “I was working in the garden when they called me in. Gotta plant those vegetables for the boys.”

“Oh!” one of the others smiled brightly. “Yeah, I try to do what the magazines tell me – patriotic duty and all – but it’s just so much work.”

“Yeah, too much,” Darcy agreed. She left the girls petting her coat and reapplying their lipstick while she collected her costume. It was identical to theirs – top hat, tiny tail coat, striped vest, hot pants and fishnets. Yeah, that was gonna happen.

“So they didn’t say what this was for exactly, just to get to the Stark Pavilion,” she said casually.

“Oh, we’re in the Stark show. We stand in front of the car, smile. Allie there introduces Howard. He does his little speech, we take the tires, and he makes the car fly!” one practically screamed. “Can you believe that? I checked for wires and everything. There’s nothing. It really flies.”

Darcy couldn’t keep the smile off her face, both at her childish glee and at the prospect of being on the same stage as Howard Stark. Maybe she could slip a note into his pocket. Yeah, when she was moving the tire or whatever.

Ugh, but that meant wearing the redonk costume.

She groaned into her hand, but knew she had to do it. She grabbed a pen and paper and disappeared behind the privacy screen with the costume. She hurriedly wrote the note she would somehow slip Stark, then changed. The tights were horrible, the hot pants were atrocious, the tailcoat was actually pretty cool and, thankfully, the stupid vest was adjustable enough to accommodate her boobs. It wasn’t exactly the first impression she would have wanted to make, but at least it would get her close enough to make a first impression at all.

“Hello, ladies.”

Darcy peered around the privacy screen as the girls squealed, actually _squealed_. They were prancing toward the man at the door, their red lips spreading into wide and welcoming smiles.

“We ready?” the man asked.

“Almost. New girl’s changing now,” Blondie told him, gesturing a gloved hand in Darcy’s general direction.

The man smirked a smug little smirk as they fawned over him. Darcy’s eyebrow rose of its own accord as she looked him over, studying his double-breasted tux and dark pomaded hair and stupid little moustache. He smirked and swaggered. God, he was as bad as Tony.

“Stark,” Darcy realized.

“The one and only,” the man smiled.

“Oh, Mr Stark, I’m Darcy,” she ran forward, nearly breaking her ankle on the heels they’d given her to wear.

He nodded and smiled, still not even looking at her. “Yeah, Marcie, nice to meet you.”

“Darcy,” she corrected, rather irritably. “I actually need to talk to you. Can I meet with you after the show?”

“Sorry, sweetheart, I got plans for tonight,” he said, sounding in no way apologetic. His smirking eyes tore themselves away from Allie long enough to finally look at her. His demeanor shifted as he moved closer. “But I think I might be able to see about taking you out later in the week. What do you say, Mandy?” He slid an arm around her waist, pulling her in close.

Oh, how she wished she had her Taser.

Stark was saved by the bell. Literally, a bell rang just as Darcy was about to knee him in the balls.

“That’s fifteen minutes,” Howard called. “See you ladies out there. Mandy.” He gave her butt a pat as he headed for the door.

“That’s Howard Stark?” Darcy questioned.

“Yeah,” the girls sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't originally planned for Darcy to be in the motor show, but while rewatching the scene I noticed 'Mandy' on the far right and how awkward her movements were compared to everyone else and thought that could totally be Darcy. :)


	3. First Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy is a tech dealer.

The girls descended on Darcy as she had only ever seen women do in terrifying makeover scenes in teen movies. They tugged at her hair, yanking it way harder than seemed necessary, twisting it up off her neck and jabbing hairpins into her skull. Then the makeup happened. If she wasn’t facing the mirror, she would have sworn they were making her up to look like a clown, they were applying so much.  But when they moved away, she looked just like them.  

“You clean up pretty good,” Blondie commented with a nod of approval.

The lights flashed again, sending a cry from the girls as they grabbed their top hats and hurried out the door. As they walked, Allie explained in more detail what would happen and where her place was in the line. When Darcy learned that she would be standing at the front of the line and nearest to Howard ‘Grabby Hands’ Stark,  she wasn’t sure if she wanted to smile or hurl. She knew the proximity was good for putting her note into his pocket, but she really didn’t think she wanted to be any nearer to him than necessary. Smarmy bastard.

“Places!” a stagehand cried, and Darcy was shoved into position. Literally, shoved. The stagehand forcibly arranging her limbs where they were meant to be, placing one hand on her hat and another on her hip, kicking her foot into position. “That’s your pose. Don’t lose it.”

“Smile,” Blondie hissed in her ear. For all her rudeness, Blondie was beyond helpful, whispering and hissing through a perfect smile all the moves Darcy needed to perform. “Bend your right knee. Palm up. Turn to the audience. Keep smiling.”

Darcy did as she was told, feeling like a queasy marionette as the crowd clapped.

Allie traipsed across the stage to collect Stark’s hat and give him the microphone. As she did, she gave Darcy the opportunity she needed. They were standing directly in front of her as Mr. Grabby Hands leaned in and kissed the girl’s lips. With the crowd and Stark so distracted, she easily pushed the note and her phone into his pocket.

“To the back,” Blondie muttered, her smile never wavering.

Darcy followed, glad to be at the back of the line so she could see what she was meant to be doing. She lead the line back to the front to collect her tire,  walking it around the nose of the car and trying not to cringe when Stark addressed her as ‘Mandy’ again.  

“Keep smiling. And give ‘em some leg.”

Darcy kept smiling even as the floating car sparked and crashed hard to the stage.

Shiiiiiit, she thought, certain someone was going to point the accusing finger at her. But just like his son, Stark smirked and played it off, winning a laugh and more applause from the audience below.

“What happened?” the gruff man demanded, eyeballing each girl as they left the stage. “You break somethin’, it comes outta your pay!”

“Oh, shut it, Lou,” Allie commanded. “Stark can afford it.”

Darcy said nothing at all. It was her gravity jet pack thing that had caused the failure. For all she knew, she had managed to break something when she grabbed the tire.

Lou leaned in, his flat nose inches from hers. “You don’t come back here tomorrow. Stark’s only got one more day here, and he don’t need you breakin’ nothin’ else.”

“Whatever,” Darcy said and shoved past him to reach the dressing room. She threw her own clothes back on, thankful to find Maria Lewis’s coat still there and the little bit of money still in the pocket. Maybe two dollars wasn’t worth much in 1943 money either. She hurried from the dressing room in time to see Allie cozying up to Stark, still in his tuxedo and presumably with the phone still in his pocket.

“I’ll see you girls tomorrow,” Stark called over his shoulder.

“Stark!” Darcy shouted.

The man didn’t even flinch. He slid an arm around Allie, and sauntered out through a door marked ‘Exit to Street’.

Darcy chased after them, taking the door at breakneck speed, shoving it wide and running out onto the sidewalk. Too late. They were in a car before she could get Stark’s attention, pulling away before she even made it to the curb.

An enormous yellow cab sat two cars down. Darcy elbowed a couple out of her way to reach it, diving in to the backseat and slamming the door.

“Follow that car!” She pointed to the sleek silver car still visible down the road.

“Who are you? Nora Charles?”

“Yes, I am!” she said through clench teeth, not caring that she had no idea who Nora Charles was. “Now hurry it up! He’s getting away!”

The cabbie shook his head, but pointed the car onto the road and drove. “So who we tailin’?”

“Howard Stark.”

“Yeah?” he said, looking back at her through the rearview mirror, his eyes crinkling up in a smile. “I gave him a ride once. He tipped big. You a friend of his?”

“He’s getting away!”

The cab began to speed up, gaining on the car ahead. “Went to see him at the Expo yesterday,” the cabbie said conversationally.

“Who?”

“Stark,” the man reminded her. “I can’t wait till all these cars start flyin’. It’s gonna be like Buck Rogers.” He smiled a yellow-toothed smile so warm and genuine that Darcy couldn’t help but smile back.

“Yeah, just like that,” she agreed.

“Looks like he’s heading across the bridge. Might get pricey,” the man warned her.

“I’ve got two dollars,” she said. “Just get me as close to that as you can and I’ll run the rest of the way if I have to.” She leaned back on the seat, hungry and tired and terrified that she had lost her only proof that she was from somewhere far, far away. Would Stark even check his pocket? What if the phone fell out? She shouldn’t have given up the phone.

She kept her eye on Stark’s car and the meter as it ticked up toward the dollar mark.

“Well, how about that,” the cabbie said with an appreciative whistle. “A dollar twenty-five, and you don’t gotta go runnin’ nowhere.” He turned in his seat and smiled at her as if he were her own personal superhero, which he kind of was at the moment.

She handed over the two dollars. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks, lady!” he said and tipped his cap to her.

She slid from the cab, closing the door with care and waving as he drove back into the city and left her alone in the dark. She stood in the quiet street a moment, for once trying to think before she acted, but it was no good. Her arguments all made her sound insane, even in her own head, so she just marched up the driveway toward the massive stone house. Lights were on inside the house, but there was no sign that anyone had passed this way. The car was nowhere in sight and the exterior light was not shining above the front door.   

Swallowing her nerves, she made her way up the steps and reached for the doorbell, frowning at the little brass knob that sat where a button ought to be. Fumbling in the darkness, she managed to get the thing to turn. The ring that came at its turning was deafening from outside the door, so she knew someone had to have heard her inside. It took too long, though, and she turned it again.

She was just about to send that bell ringing a third time when the light over her head turned on and the door opened.

The man standing in the doorway looked positively harassed. “May I help you?”

“I need to talk to Stark,” Darcy said, trying to push her way in, but the man was considerably taller than she was and easily blocked her way.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark is currently entertaining,” he replied politely. “If you’ll call back tomorrow morning, I think you’ll find him more receptive.”

“Dude,” she sighed. “This is kind of important and sciencey. I don’t really have until tomorrow.”

“I am sorry. M—“

“Are you his butler? Do you, like, check his pockets and stuff?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Why do you ask?” Honest curiosity in his voice when he asked.

“Well, I put something in his pocket earlier to get his attention, and I want it back. It’s small, white. About this big,” she held her hands up in a rough approximation of the size and shape of her phone. “If you could get that back to me, like now, that’d be super.”

The man frowned down at her for a long moment. “Let me see what I can do. Wait here.” He shut the door in her face, but left the exterior light on over her head. She took that as a good sign.

One minute turned into way too many and she sat herself down on the steps. Her stomach growled and her feet ached and she just wanted to feel the comforting weight of her phone again to remind herself that she wasn’t going crazy. At least twenty minutes had to have passed. She was getting ready to give up or ring the bell again when a scream flew from an open window above her.

The front door flew open less than a minute later. Howard Stark came running at her, shirtless, pants unbuttoned, his hair standing on end and face covered in lipstick. His smile was enormous and his eyes crazed and unblinking. He held her phone in his hand.

“This…” he gasped. “This… this…”

“Is mine,” Darcy finished for him and snatched it from his shaking fingers.

He whined at its removal, his fingers reaching out to reclaim it. “No! Please, I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“First taste is free,” she smiled, holding the phone just out of his reach. “You wanna get with this. It’s gonna cost you.”

“Anything! My cars, my penthouse, take it all!”

Darcy considered it. She could live a pretty sweet life in 1943 if she had all of Howard Stark’s worldly possessions at her disposal. Glamorous parties, slinky dresses and fur coats. She frowned to think what she would have to give up. No Starkbucks. No Mario Kart. No Jane.

“I need help getting home.”

“Jarvis can give you a ride,” he offered, gesturing to the polite British man still hovering in the doorway.

“Jarvis? Your butler’s name is Jarvis? Oh, that is awesome!” Darcy laughed. Tony was so cool.

“I have airplanes if you need to leave the country,” he offered, desperation evident in his every breath. “I have friends in the State Department who can get you anywhere you need to go.”

“Location isn’t the problem, my man,” she said, unlocking the phone and opening her photo gallery. Stark maneuvered himself to her side, watching over her shoulder as she opened the app and flipped through the pictures. She could feel his body quaking with the thrill of discovery. “You know what that is?”

“A picture of you,” he said. “Look at the quality of that photograph.”

“No, the background, genius,” she snarled. As she spread her fingers across the screen to enlarge the image, Howard whimpered as the image shifted and grew larger. “There. That tunnel. Do you know what that is?”

Stark suddenly stilled as he focused not on the device but the portion of the image Darcy wanted him to see. The tunnel, lovely and bright in a pristine lab. “No.”

“Jane called it an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. A wormhole,” she told him, disheartened that he didn’t recognize it immediately. “She said it connected two points in space, but this one connected two points in time. You need to science me up a wormhole so I can get back home to 2014.”

In the light of the screen, Darcy could see Stark’s face as he considered her words. For all his pomp and swagger, he was a scientist. He had held proof of her story in his hands, seen technology unlike anything that would exist for another half century. Surely, that counted for something.

“I think I need a drink.”

He trudge up the steps and walked into the house, leaving the door open behind him.

Darcy stood out on the driveway. “Great. Now what?”

“You might try coming inside,” Jarvis suggested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit to having no clue what average cab rates were back in 1940s NYC, so I made something up. It's how I do.


	4. All About That Brow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jarvis is awesome, Howard is alternately smug and confused, and Darcy is desperate... but not that desperate.

Darcy groaned as the morning light pierced the curtains and stabbed her in the eyes. She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, but it was no use trying to get back to sleep again. That dream had been too weird, and she did not want to go back to it. Live in a world without Doritos or WiFi? She was so not made for that.

"No more burritos before bed," she decided.

She stretched languidly and felt the tightness in her legs, as if she really had walked the ten miles like in her dream. Her fingers reached blindly toward the night table, seeking and finding her phone right where it belonged. She smiled into the pillow.

"Just a dream."

She hugged the phone to her, rolling onto her back and squinting up at it. She woke the screen and slid the bar to unlock it, sad to see the warning pop up that it was nearly out of power. So much for her lazy morning scrolling Instagram.

The power cord wasn't tied around the lamp as it normally was, and she scowled; she hated having to dig for it, but her baby was worth getting out of bed for. She slipped from the sheets, which felt oddly silky for freshly washed cotton, and reached behind the table, not finding the cord. Cursing, she shoved her glasses on and pushed the table aside. No cord.

"Where the hell did I put it?" She scratched her head and turned to the room, freezing as she did.

The room was huge, with ceilings so tall that the full-sized, four-poster bed managed to look tiny. The sheets were silk. The nightgown on her body was, too. Her eyes darted around the opulent room, not admiring but searching. Searching for her clothes. They were gone. Even her boots.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck," she groaned and fell onto the bed. "Not a dream."

"Miss Lewis," a quiet voice called through the door.

"Yeah," she answered.

The door opened slowly and Jarvis entered, immediately turning his face to the ceiling. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"Why?"

"Um, I hadn't realized you were…" he said. "There is a dressing gown in the wardrobe."

Darcy snorted. "Dude, you're holding my underwear."

"Be that as it may, it's hardly appropriate for me to see a young woman in her night attire," he stammered and blushed. Keeping his eyes pointed skyward, he shuffled across the Persian rug and set the stack of clothes on glossy surface of the nearest piece of furniture. "Your items have been laundered. Your shoes are polished and just outside the door. Breakfast will be in thirty minutes, if you care to come down."

Darcy bit back the laughter at his embarrassment. "Thanks, J."

"Very good," he said and spun around, all but slamming the door in his haste.

Darcy found an ensuite bathroom with a claw foot tub large enough for two and a handheld showerhead attached to an elaborate chrome faucet. She did a small dance of glee at the sight of it. Her grandfather had once gone on and on ad nauseam about no one appreciating the marvels around them, citing showers as a prime example, that his home hadn't had a shower until 1955. That, naturally, led to crass jokes about how bad the house must have smelled.

Darcy would never again make such jokes.

The shower was freezing, but better than living with the layer of grease, ash and soot on her skin. Walking across New York City pre-fuel injected engine and surgeon general warning was hella nasty. She was surprised that Lou guy from the Expo believed she was a dancing girl, she was so filthy.

She threw the clean clothes onto her now clean body and shoved her feet into her boots.

"Food," she said, grabbing her phone off the table and instinctively checking for anything she might have missed while showering. The warning popped up again and she cried out to see the battery was at barely seven percent. " _No_!"

She ran down the stairs and hunted through the ground floor for Stark, finding him sitting at a long breakfast table and wearing a relaxed smile and a completely unironic smoking jacket.

"Good m—"

"The battery is nearly dead," she interrupted, shoving the phone in his face. "I don't have the charger."

He eyed the phone and her unrestrained panic, a smooth smile taking over his face. "Well, I could mock something up."

Something in his voice managed to cut through her agitation, a smug and manipulative lilt that had her wondering what was in it for him. "Go on."

"I'd have to open it up…"

"And in the process learn how it works so you can totally rip off Steve Jobs and introduce smartphones seventy years sooner. Yeah, no." She pulled the phone to her chest and eyed him as she would a panhandler.

"Okay, but I can't keep it operating if I don't know how it works." He grinned and took a bite of toast.

She dropped into a chair as far as she could from Howard 'Grabby Hands' Stark. First he molested her ass, now he wanted to molest her phone. Her anger and suspicion had no effect on him whatsoever, but she kept her narrowed eyes on him anyway, even as she ate the food Jarvis set in front of her.

"So, Mandy," Stark said.

"It's Darcy, sir," Jarvis corrected as he refilled the man's coffee.

"That's what I said. Darcy. Tell me, what exactly do you need me to do?"

Darcy's suspicion shifted to the tall man hovering next to her. Jarvis seemed oblivious to her concern and continued to pour coffee and add toast to the table. He was obviously a man Stark trusted, if he were willing to ask such questions with him in earshot, and he must have been in the Stark's service for a while, if Tony named his super awesome AI after him. When had Tony been born? Somewhere around 1970. That put Jarvis at Stark's side for over thirty years. Yep, totally trustworthy.

"I need a way home. My boss-lady, Jane, she's an astrophysicist and she can science like nobody's business," Darcy said, the words tumbling out as fast as she could think them, which in retrospect was probably not a good thing. "She got this box of science you came up with back in the '40s and used it to make her own wormhole. I was being stupid because there was a hella sweet coat in the box from your assistant, Maria, and didn't see the wormhole until it was like right on top of me. And then I was standing on this street where the building I had been in was or, I mean, it will be, but not for another seventy years."

Stark blinked at her a moment. "So, you need me to…"

"Science. Like a boss."

He continued to stare, unblinking and mouth agape in a manner more suited to a fish. "Mandy."

"Darcy," Jarvis corrected again.

"Darcy, I am a genius. I've created inventions no one else in the world ever dreamed possible, hold more patents than half the staff of NYU combined," he said without the slightest hint of pride or smugness. "And I have no idea what you just said."

She groaned. "Jane said you were brilliant, called your science amazing and practically perfect. Well, if your Mary Poppins science got me here, then it can send me back. " She stood and stomped to his end of the table, folding her arms across her chest and channeling every chromosome she had inherited from her mother to give him her most condescending glare. "You made this mess. You clean it up."

Stark gaped up at her vacantly for far too long. "I can try."

"Damn right, you'll try!"

"I hate to interrupt," Jarvis said. "But you do have a meeting with Colonel Phillips and Dr. Erskine this morning at eleven."

Stark checked his watch and his eyebrows shot to his hairline. "Can't keep Uncle Sam waiting." He downed the rest of his coffee and stood.

"You can't leave," Darcy protested. "What about the wormhole? What about my phone? I can't science without you!"

"I can take it with me," he offered.

"Like hell I'll let you two alone in the same room together. You'll science all over it and it'll never be the same again. It'll be traumatized!" She shoved the phone deep into her pocket, cringing to hear the warning beep of a battery about to die.

He shrugged. "Fine, keep it with you. I'll be back later."

"And what am I supposed to do while you're gone?" she demanded.

"I don't know. Do whatever broads do where you're from." He gave her a vague gesture that wasn't in the least bit helpful.

"Might I suggest calling Mrs. Bloomquist," Jarvis offered. "That is if Darcy is to be staying for any length of time." As he said it, both men looked her up and down.

"Good idea. Call her over," the man agreed, adding with a meaningful look, "All possible occasions."

"Of course, sir," the butler stepped aside as Stark strolled from the room.

Darcy scowled at his retreating form before prodding Jarvis in the arm. "Mrs. Bloomquist?"

"The finest seamstress in the city. Mr. Stark keeps her on retainer for such occasions as this," he explained.

Something about that seemed very weird, even to a woman who lived in a magical tower where Norse demi-gods and giant green rage monstered often were found arm wrestling. "That is so not cool."

"Normally I would agree. However, at the moment the practice will serve you rather well, I think," he replied and she couldn't argue with that logic. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I must see to the removal of Mr. Stark's other guest. Might I suggest you wait in the sitting room? The lady was understandably displeased at being so abruptly abandoned last night, and I don't anticipate her reaction to be one of grace." With a raised eyebrow and a slight bow, he stepped from the room.

Darcy had often imagined what JARVIS would look like if he had a body. More specifically a face. They had grown close in the few months she'd spent in Avengers Tower. Despite being, you know, not real, he had a wicked sense of humor and was quick to call bullshit on anyone who deserved it (not unlike Darcy). His face always changed in her mind, but the one thing that remained constant was his eyebrows. JARVIS had magnificent eyebrows that expressed the full range of human emotion in their slightest movement, and the raising of which would put fear into the heart of even the bravest soul.

As she watched Jarvis leave, she knew she had been so right about the eyebrows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel the need at this point to inform you that I am writing without a Beta and to request that if you notice any glaring issues in grammar, spelling or canon to TELL ME!!  
> If everything's good and you love the story, TELL ME!!  
> If you think it needs a little work... you guessed it, TELL ME!


	5. Odd Girl Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy invents Pop Tarts.

Mrs. Hildegard ‘Hildy’ Bloomquist arrived at precisely 10:00 that morning. She was about forty, average height, with round cheeks and a slightly squared jaw. Her thin blond hair was pulled back at her ears and curled everywhere else. The woman was brought into the sitting room where Darcy had been told to wait. It was clear from the moment she looked at Darcy that she had seen worse, mainly because those were the first words that came out of her mouth.

“Well, she’s certainly not the worst one I’ve seen,” Hildy sighed and handed her coat to Jarvis.

“Mr. Stark requests you fit her for ‘all possible occasions’,” he said and left the two alone.

“On your feet girl,” the woman barked as she produced measuring tape from nowhere. “Clothes over there.”

Darcy looked around the room with its enormous windows, doors on three walls and thinking of the two men in the house that she didn’t know all that well. “Uh, is there not a more private room for this?”

“This room has the best light. You want privacy, you shouldn’t be with Howard,” she all but snorted.

“I’m not—“

“Save it, honey,” Hildy said, cutting off her protest with a gesture. “It’s not my business. I’m just here to make you look the part. Now, clothes over there.”

The woman sighed and tapped a lacquered fingernail against the measuring tape while she waited for Darcy to comply.

It took a few minutes. There was a reason she lived in oversized sweaters. She knew she had a killer rack and was proud of her assets, but, with two older brothers, her boobs weren’t exactly the kind of thing she liked to show off to just anybody – Bing had once punched a boy in the face for staring at her chest; Ben shoved another’s head down a toilet. No, she learned to keep the girls covered for the sake of her brothers’ juvenile records and their chances at getting into college. It was an old habit by now.

 “Fine.” Darcy  sighed, and pulled the sweater over her head as she kicked off her boots. T-shirt and jeans followed until she stood in a hot pink bra and Wonder Woman undies, fists on hips, daring the woman contemplating her to say something disparaging.

“I think I have your type,” she said with a smile. “Now we just need the measurements. Stand up straight, chin up.” The cloth measuring tape circled and encompassed and bisected her until she was sure there wasn’t an inch of her left uncalculated. “Very good. Clothes on.”

Hildy turned and jot something on a notepad before pulling fabrics from a small leather suitcase. She made Darcy stand by the window while she held each one under her chin, then again in the shadow at the other end of the room, until there was a small stack of colors that she deemed worthy.

“Uh, what now?” Darcy asked.

“Now, I go do my job, and you… well, you do whatever it is you do,” Hildy commented and closed the case with a disapproving ‘snap’ of the latch. She turned and left Darcy alone in the room feeling surly and annoyed.

She stomped across the room toward the door, ready to tell the woman off, but was met by Jarvis instead. “Ah, Darcy. Mr. Stark asked me to inform you that he will not be returning to the house today, but that you are welcome to remain as long as you require.”

“Great.”

His eyebrow said enough that he didn’t have to offer a reply.

“Where is he?”

“New Jersey,” Jarvis said. “He is consulting with the army on a project for the war effort. It looks as if he will be there for some time.”

Darcy nodded as a frown began to form on her face. It was impossible not to know that Howard Stark had been instrumental in winning World War II. Every schoolbook referenced him within a few paragraphs of D-Day and the atomic bomb, but something about him being in New Jersey bothered her. This was special. A bit of information few were privy to, and it just would not click. What was it about Stark, New Jersey and the war that she was supposed to remember?

“So, what is it I’m meant to do?” Darcy asked.

“Well, what is it you do where you are from?” Jarvis inquired.

She shrugged. “I’m an assistant. I assist.”

“Would you care to assist me, then?” he offered with a smile.

“I’d love to, J! Do I have to take my clothes off for this one?”

The man flushed a deep and embarrassed red. “No, thankfully. I don’t think my wife would approve.”

“Aw, J!” she punched his arm in the universal dude-bro language of a job well done. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

He looked at her a moment, considering her, then answered with a fond smile. “Her name is Anna,” he said and continued to smile down at her.

“What? Why are you smiling like a creepy Cheshire Cat?”

“I have served Mr. Stark for some time now, seen to a number of his lady guests. You are the first to ever ask about my wife.”

“That’s because I’m awesome,” she grinned, then added, “And because I’m not a ‘lady guest’. Definitely not. Nope. _Never_.” She shuddered at the very idea of her and Mr. Grabby Hands, a bit of sick crawling up her throat.

“I would be careful saying such things around Mr. Stark. He might take it as a challenge.”  Those eyebrows were at it again, gesturing out a subtle message of concern, warning and humor. “And his charm borders on legendary.”

“I got this, J. No worries.”

He nodded and gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”

“Totes!” she grinned and led the way down a hallway of gorgeous paintings and polished hardwood floors. She couldn’t wait to try it for sock slides later. “So, what am I assisting on today?”

“A strawberry soufflé,” he said. His face dropped slightly as he admitted, “My wife loves them but I have yet to manage one successfully. The chef allows me access to the kitchen to practice while Mr. Stark is away. I would practice at home, but I do hate to get Anna's hopes up.” He held the door to the kitchen open for her, handing over an apron before putting on his own. “Are you any good with a paring knife?”

“But of course!” she declared, though she wasn’t actually certain she could positively identify a paring knife if shown one in a lineup.

“Very good. Then you may assist in hulling the strawberries.” He held the handle of a small knife toward her. “That means to remove the leaves and stems.”

“I totally knew that,” she bluffed; his eyebrow made it clear that he knew better. She took the offered knife and set to work on the strawberries, ever thankful that she did not inherit her grandfather’s allergy to them. Her hands froze midway through cutting a strawberry.

“Have you cut yourself?”

“No, I just thought of Grampa Lewis.”

Jarvis made a noise of understanding deep in his throat. “Yes, if you really are seventy years removed from your proper home, I image he would be quite young now. Perhaps even young enough for war?”

Darcy looked at him, his face earnest with concern. “He was drafted two days after his eighteenth birthday in 1945. Sent to Iwo Jima and lost a leg.”

Jarvis spoke with all the solemnity the conversation deserved. “He will be very lucky then.”

“I know. He gets to dress up like a pirate every Halloween. That peg leg scares the shit out of the kids.”

He couldn’t quite stifle the laugh. “Very lucky indeed.”

The soufflé turned out soggy, and what little height it had fell the moment it touched the counter. Jarvis drove into the city and bought more strawberries to try again, taking Darcy with him. She sat in the front seat, insisting that he wasn’t a taxi driver or her chauffer; his eyebrow told her that he was secretly very pleased. The shop they went to first was tiny, just two aisles that ran the length of the storefront from the door on the street side to the door at the back. There wasn’t even a back storeroom. Darcy marveled at how anyone managed to get by in life without forty choices of salad dressing or thirty flavors of Pop Tarts.

At the thought, she looked up from the can of beans in her hands. “Hey, J, you ever heard of Pop Tarts?”

The man frowned as he thought. “No, I can’t say that I have. What are they?”

“Only the most delicious invention of the twentieth century, after Chunky Monkey ice cream, which B-T-Dubs doesn’t actually have monkey in it. That would not be tasty goodness,” she cringed. “They’re delicious little handheld pastries with frosting and sprinkles on the outside and ooey-gooey flavorful goodness in the middle. Strawberry is a classic. But brown sugar-cinnamon is a close second. I always thought the chocolate ones tasted like ass, though. Again, not literally.”

He considered her description. “I’ll see what I can do. I believe we have enough flour to permit further experimentation.”

“J! You’re the best!” she cried and launched herself at him, wrapping him in a hug so tight his response came out as a breathless wheeze.

“One does ones best.”

“Next up, mocha lattes!” she declared. “Where’s the coffee?”

“They’re all out, I’m afraid,” he pointed past her to an empty bit of shelf. A handwritten note from the owner made their apologies and blamed the Nazis for it.

“And how might Nazis have absconded with all the beans?” she questioned.

“Rationing,” Jarvis said as if it were obvious. When she continued to look dumbfounded, he elaborated. “Coffee is highly prized for the soldiers on the front. Most of the country’s supply is sent to them. The shops get what’s left, which isn’t much. Same for sugar, butter, meat.”

“Damn, dude. How do you people survive?” she whistled. “Okay, so mocha lattes will have to wait. But Pop Tarts are a total necessity.”

She wondered what else she might try to have Jarvis or Stark’s chef make. There were only a few food items Darcy put in the ‘Absolute Necessities of Life’ category along with air, phone and coffee – Pop Tarts was one, Doritos was the other. “Is cheese rationed?”

“Unfortunately, yes. It was added to the list only last month. And I’m afraid we’ve already bought our fair share,” he sighed loudly as he shifted closer and leaned into her. “We have rather a bit more leeway than most given Mr. Stark’s importance to the war effort,” he said sotto voce, “but we do try not to rub it in.”

Darcy nodded her understanding. “By ‘we’ you mean ‘you’, right? I can’t see Mr. Grabby Hands in here doing the shopping for himself.”

“No, Mr. Stark has other duties to attend to,” he said diplomatically.

“Other duties like those lady guests you mentioned?” she smiled innocently.

“Among other things. He is off meeting with Colonel Phillips right now, if you recall.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved his logic away, turning in search of produce. “Where are the strawberries?”

“At the green grocer down the street.”

“It’s not all at the same store? Lame,” she moaned and trudged after him. “Why haven’t they invented the supermarket yet?”

Jarvis had no answer to the clearly rhetorical question. He paid for his items, tearing stamps from a booklet and handing them over to the round little woman behind the counter who spent more time eying Darcy than noticing how many rationing stamps she was given.

“Your clothes will be ready within the week,” he informed her on the way back to the car.

“It’s fine. I’m used to people looking at me funny,” she assured him.  

“Still, perhaps I can find something more appropriate for when our next soufflé fails.”

“Way to be optimistic, bro.”


	6. Party Like It's 1943

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy does not make a plan, does not accept free drinks but does have a very delayed reaction.

Darcy scowled at her phone, trying to will it to life by the power of her mind alone. It didn’t work any better than the last eighteen (thousand) times she had attempted it. She wanted music. She wanted internet. She wanted more than tailing around after Jarvis. He was a stand-up guy, totally awesome all around, especially after he managed to get Froggy, the chef, to make Pop Tarts; they couldn’t quite match the chemical-laden, over-processed deliciousness that were proper, store bought Pop Tarts, but they came damn close. No, she loved the guy, but she was so bored.

Six days Stark had been gone to the Garden State.

What the hell was there to do in New Jersey for six days?

Okay, so he was doing official and important wartime consulty things for some super high-up military guy. That still didn’t take six days!

“Darcy.”

“S’up, J,” she said dully.

“Mrs. Bloomquist has arrived for your final fitting.”

It was testament to just how bored she was that she was actually excited to see the disapproving woman. She leapt from her chair and ran to follow Jarvis. “If they fit, can we go out and show off my new duds?”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Stark was rather specific in his instructions,” he replied apologetically.

“That’s news to me. What’d he say? No wild parties?”

“Essentially, yes.”

She scoffed. “I’ve been out to every store in the city; I don’t see what it matters if I go to a club or wherever you vintage models go for fun.” She laughed at the absurdity of it.

When he shifted his eyes away from her and rubbed at his ear, she knew there was a problem. It couldn’t be her desire to get out; she had been out in the city, been seen by and interacted with any number of people, so clearly Stark’s orders hadn’t been to keep her hidden away. Jarvis had been with her, so…

Jarvis was with her.

He was always with her wherever she went. There was hardly a moment of the day that he wasn’t within twenty feet of her. She thought he had been keeping her company, but clearly he was doing more than that. He was keeping an eye on her, acting as a chaperone, a watch dog. And if they tried to go to a fancy-pantsed night club, Jarvis, being a man so clearly a servant, probably wouldn’t make it past the door, which would mean Darcy would have to go in alone. And Jarvis didn’t want that. Because Stark didn’t want that.

“Message received and understood,” Darcy said coldly. “I’ll be in my room later if you need me, Mr. Jarvis.”

“Darcy…”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Bloomquist is waiting.”

She marched from his presence, slamming the door to the sitting room where Hildy and an assistant stood with a rack of hangers draped in protective covers. The seamstress looked her over, nodding her approval at the dress Jarvis had managed to find for her to wear.

“Better,” she commented, “but that color does nothing for you.”

“You can do better?” Darcy asked a bit rudely.

“Can. And have,” she replied with absolute conviction. “Clothes off.”

Darcy was so annoyed that she didn’t even hesitate in the face of the unknown assistant and just stripped down to her Wonder Woman underoos . Fifteen dresses were tried and all but one fit to perfection, even the gorgeous little black number with beaded embellishments.

Hildy checked the shoulders, underarms, bust darts and hips. “Off.”

“Do I have to? It’s so pretty,” Darcy whined.

“They’re yours to keep, girl. You can wear it when we’re done,” she huffed, though Darcy was certain her eyes were dancing with pride.

She handed Darcy tailored silk blouses, pants and shorts and a bikini and, oddest of all, stylishly darted coveralls in a deep navy denim. “All occasions?” Darcy asked.

“One never knows with Howard.”

Darcy could only offer a shrug since she had spent so little time with the man.

“Just the one, then,” Hildy said, sounding a little annoyed that even that single garment was not cut and sewn to perfection. “It will be brought around tomorrow. You may put on whatever you like now, but that black number is an evening dress.”

“Well, it’s evening now,” Darcy observed.

“No, evening as in ‘out on the town’,” she insisted. “Are you going out?”

She didn’t answer as she slipped into a more Hildy Bloomquist-approved blue dress, but she was totally going out tonight. She had been cooped up or escorted around this town for a week. To hell with Stark and his orders, she needed a taste of freedom.

Darcy didn’t bother to plan and plot, she just made a break for it. She changed back into the gorgeous black dress, stole money from the deliveries jar and a set of keys from the peg near the back door, escaping out into the garage while Jarvis saw Mrs. Bloomquist and her assistant to the front door and into their van.

It took far too long to figure out which car belonged to the keys she had stolen. There were nine cars in the garage. She found the symbol that matched the one on the key fob; it was the same silver car she had followed from the Expo. Climbing in, she turned the key and filled the garage with a deafening engine noise. Jarvis had to be able to hear it. He had to be on his way to stop her. She argued the car into gear, the clutch grinding out its displeasure with her manhandling; she was out of practice driving stick shifts, but it would come back to her.

Like riding a bike, that’s what they always say, right? thought the woman who still wobbled and tipped over if put on a bicycle without training wheels.

But it did come back to her. She pressed the clutch and shifted with increasing ease as she directed the mammoth car into the city. They had driven into town daily in search of something at the shops, or perhaps it was all just a ploy to keep Darcy occupied and from complaining; regardless of the reasons for the journey, Darcy had sat in the front seat and memorized the route into town. Without a single wrong turn, she made it to the club Jarvis once pointed out as being Stark’s favorite spot for a martini.

She jerked the car to a stop in the street, not sure she’d be able to parallel park the behemoth vehicle – it had been the only part of her driver’s test that she hadn’t gotten full marks on. As she considered her options, a young woman about her age sashayed to the door and opened it for her. She was dressed like bellhops always were in the old movies and offered a pleasant, if gap-toothed, smile.

“Good evening,” the girl said, trying and failing to disguise her rough New York accent.

Darcy slid out and let the girl drive the car away, not caring if she was a valet attendant or a really clever carjacker. Stark had eight more cars in his garage. He could afford to lose one.

Squaring her shoulders, not that she really needed to with the shoulder pads built into the dress, she put on her best smile and walked into the club. The music was not the sort she had been wanting. It was jazzy and filled to capacity with brass instruments, played live by men with cheeks puffed out round and bulbous. The club wasn’t quite what she wanted either; her favorite place to hang in New York was a little dive bar with an old fashioned Wurlitzer, Thursday night trivia and Karaoke weekends. This was not that sort of place. There was a dance floor busy with spinning and swaying couples and encompassed by tables on three sides. It was nothing like any club she had ever seen outside of an old film.

She stood spellbound as couples danced cheek to cheek and not one single person twerked or broke out their awesome ‘80s robot dance. She stood too long and apparently gave the impression of a woman looking for a partner because an arm found its way around her shoulder as a face leaned into her ear. “Hey, doll, how about a dance?”

“Uh, maybe later,” Darcy said as she extracted herself from his grip, stepping back and once again wishing she had her Taser. Now that she was at a greater distance, she saw the man was in uniform. It was handsomer than he was, dark green and starched enough to stand at attention all on its own; he by contrast was pasty and pockmarked, his face slack from alcohol. Definitely not the right guy to introduce her to the nuances of 1940s dance. There was bound to be some toe breakage even with a sober partner.

“I’ll be right over there when you change your mind,” he grinned and pointed sloppily toward the bar.

“Not surprised,” she commented and left him leering at her.

She actually wanted to be at the bar, but knew better than to head directly there. G.I. Drunk would take that as way too much encouragement. So, she meandered, taking her time walking the perimeter, observing the natives and their strange customs. It was a shock to her post-surgeon general upbringing to see nearly everyone smoking. There was even a girl walking around selling cigarettes from a tray. She kind of wanted to buy a box to take home like a souvenir, but thought there might be other, cooler and less carcinogenic options available. Maybe she could start a vintage matchbook collection; that would look so cool on the wall next to her Captain America poster.

There were probably scads of matchbooks at the bar. 

The bar was a long stretch of polished mahogany that looked as if someone had hewn a tree  so large they had to create the club around it. Darcy pulled up a stool and for the first time remembered that she had no form of ID. She’d been drinking legally for nearly three full year (and illegally for about five before that), but she couldn’t prove it.

“What’ll ya have, toots?” a white-suited bartender asked with a flirtatious smile.

“What’s good here?” she asked casually, trying to seem like she frequented clubs.

“I make ‘em, so everything’s good. But you look like an Alexander the Great kind of a gal,” he commented, again with a loaded smile.

“I’ll take one of those.”

He turned away, gathering the liqueurs and alcohols he needed without bothering to card her. Damn, it was a shame she hadn’t known about Einstein-Rosen Bridges when she was seventeen.

“One Alexander the Great for the lady,” the bartender smiled. “On him.”

Before she could even turn to see who he was gesturing toward, a man was leaning on the bar beside her. “Hey, doll.”

Darcy considered him. She might not have been an expert on the 1940s, but she knew tacky when she saw it. The man’s hair resembled the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill; his tie was a garish geometric print that clashed painfully with his salmon pink shirt. His suit was ill-fitting, too tight on the chest, too loose in the sleeves. Maybe she had just developed a preference for custom-tailoring after her time with Jarvis, but she found absolutely no excuses for a man looking as cheap as this one.

“One Alexander the Great for the lady,” she told the bartender, sliding a five dollar bill across the slab of mahogany, “ _on her_.” She didn’t even bother looking at the man beside her when she told him, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Three more men tried and failed to get her attention, offering a drink or a dance. They all walked away with something rude to say about her.

“Lady,” the bartender said, leaning across to her. His smile was gone. “You do realize most every man in Manhattan is off at war, right? The pickings are slim. You’re gonna have to settle for somebody.”

“A lady like this one doesn’t need to lower her standards,” a man countered as his palm worked its way across her back, eventually settling on her hip. “Let’s dance.”

She replied through gritted teeth. “No.”

“Isn’t that why you ran away?”

Her eyes shot up to the man’s face, glaring her aggravation at him. Howard only smiled and ordered himself a martini in reply.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she hissed.

“Jarvis called, said you’d run away.” He shrugged as if racing across the state line for a phone was a common event. “And I know for a fact there’s only one club worth slipping through time for, and you’re in it.”

“You ran all the way from New Jersey ‘cause he tattled? Worried I’d share my nifty little phone with someone else?”

“Something like that,” he said with that boyish smirk that apparently worked so well on everyone else. All it did was annoy the crap out of her. “And I wasn’t in Jersey. That meeting only lasted a day.”

“So I’ve been bored out of my mind for the past five days while you boozed your way through New York?”

“Not boozing so much as schmoozing,” he corrected. “That little phone of yours put all kinds of thoughts in my head, and I had to go see someone about it.”

Darcy’s eyes narrowed without her telling them to. She had something of a built-in meter that gauged bullshit levels, and it had just swung to maximum. No one in 1943 could possibly know a damn thing about her smart phone. “Who?”

“Hedy,” he said and sipped his martini. When she didn’t say anything, he looked her way. “Hedy Lemarr,” he expanded. “Actress, famous, gorgeous, smarter than she is beautiful. None of this rings any bells for you? Okay. Last year, a friend of mine in the patent office showed me a patent Hedy was granted for scrambling signals. It was interesting, yeah, but I didn’t really think anything of it then. Then you turn up with this thing you claim is a telephone, and I can’t stop wondering how it could possibly work without wires. There are only so many frequencies messages can be sent on, so it’s got to use something to alternate the frequency to keep the messages from getting crossed. I remembered Hedy.”

Darcy nodded along with his explanation, easily following his mile-a-minute speech pattern, so similar to his son’s. “And that took five days?”

“Well, no, we got a little distracted after a few drinks,” he admitted, rubbing at the deep red mark on his neck.

So he had left her bored stiff with nothing to do but sock slides and help Jarvis – both of which got old after a while – and all to neck with some actress? “I so want to punch you in your stupid face right now.”

“If it’ll make you feel better,” he said, offering up the side of his face to her. “Just watch the nose. I’m meeting the president next week. They’re will be cameras. You understand.”

She had not planned on hitting him, but it was quite clear he didn’t think she would actually do it. So she did. She clocked him so hard his head snapped back and took his whole body with him, sending him through a dessert cart before he finally crashed to the floor.

“Asshat,” she groused and sat back down on her barstool, waiting for him to regain consciousness. He may be a jackass, but he was also a genius. She knew he would make the equation to send her home. Jane said it was almost complete, so she just had to keep him working on it until it was finished.

“Ow.”

“Shut it, asshole, you deserved it.”

“Ow,” he whined again. “That hurt.”

“It’s a punch, genius. It’s supposed to hurt,” she snorted.

He groaned as he sat up, cradling his jaw. “Were you raised by wolves? Jesus!”

“No,” she smiled. “Two older brothers who took zero shits from anyone.”

“Apparently.” He flexed his jaw, cringing when it popped. “I think it’s time to leave. They’ll have called the papers on me by now. I don’t want this in the society column.”

“You seem like you’d like being in the papers.”

He shot her a look so filthy it ought to have been censored. “Being seen shaking hands with Demaggio or having Ava Gardner on my arm, not laid out on my ass covered in - What is this? Mousse?”

Again she snorted. “Oh, please. In my day, we’d have cellphone videos of me knocking you on your ass all over the internet for the world to see. I’d have a million ‘likes’ already.”

“I’ll pretend that made sense,” he agreed and shifted to his feet. Groaning again to see every inch of his bespoke jacket coated in whipped cream and custard. He took it off and threw it to the ground. “You’re lucky I’m in love with your technology, sweetheart.”

His fingers gripped her elbow, pulling her along with him as he hurried from the club. Judging by the anxious glances he kept sending her way, she suspected that his overly tight grip was less a show of dominance and more to keep her from punching him a second time. It was almost enough to make her laugh. She’d been through this once before after Tasering Thor; whenever she reached for her bag, the man – a bona fide demi-god – would flinch or back away. It was hilarious. She had pointed a banana at him once and made a buzzing noise just to see what he would do. Again, hilarious.

“Silver Olds,” Stark told the girl outside the club and waited impatiently, fingers still digging into her elbow, for the car to be brought around.

“Oh, she really was a valet girl,” Darcy muttered, a little disappointed, when someone brought back the car she had ‘borrowed’.

“I’m going to ignore your disregard for my personal property in light of you punching me in the face,” Stark said with none of his usual smirk. He held the door for her in an affectation of gentlemanly courtesy; the look he gave her was anything but that of a gentleman.

She waited for him to climb into the driver’s seat before she replied. “You offered. If you didn’t want it, you shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it!” he shouted.

“Which is exactly why I did. Don’t sass me, Stark.”

He muttered under his breath as he drove, glaring over his shoulder at her, looking so much like Tony after she pranked him that first week in the lab that she found herself laughing. The undignified snort of a laugh grew into a manic cackle that filled the cab and had her bend double with her arms wrapped around her stomach. It brought tears to her eyes. Once they started, they didn’t stop.

“Oh, god, I want to go home,” she said, the tears flowing freely down her face.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearly called this chapter Beauty and the Beat after [THIS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EptPiz-ZYvM%22) fab Postmodern Jukebox cover of the Justin Bieber song.  
> (And that link again in case my HTML is busted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EptPiz-ZYvM )  
> While not the best they've done, I still love it.
> 
> And Darcy is totally an Alexander the Great kind of girl.  
> Recipe as proof:  
> 1/2 oz creme de cacao  
> 1/2 oz coffee liqueur  
> 1/2 oz cream  
> 1 1/2 oz vodka


	7. Before It was Cool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy freaks out, corrupts 1940s English with her Darcyisms and gets a job.

It had taken six days, but the flood gates finally opened.

Realization about the world and situation in which she had found herself hit, and it hit hard, leaving Darcy wrapped in a cocoon of blankets in her room, alternately sobbing and laughing at her lot in life – gods, elves, wormholes and all. She wanted to pop a factory’s worth of bubble wrap, but Jarvis informed her that, sadly, it hadn’t been invented yet. Instead he kept her relatively sane with a steady supply of fresh-from-the-oven cookies and the very best version of a mocha latte he and Froggy were capable of creating. She had enough wherewithal left to appreciate that theirs was actually better than anything Starbucks had ever offered.

“J.”

The man paused on his way out the door. “Yes, Darcy?”

“This is hella good. Keep it coming,” she said and buried her head back inside her cocoon.

“Of course.”

She could hear them talking outside the door. Part of her wanted to march out there and shout at everyone for not getting to work solving this problem. If they’d just science the shit out this, then she wouldn’t still be having a mental breakdown in Stark’s spare bedroom. She could have it in the safety of her room at Avengers Tower instead, where a completely different Stark and JARVIS would be arguing outside the door. Thinking of those two made the other part of her win out; the part that wanted to curl into a ball and hide until it all went away.

“Lewis.”

“What?”

“I have something for you.”

“Is it a way home?” She squinted through a gap in the blankets, watching Stark creep around the room as if she were a bomb about to explode.

“No, but it might help.”

“Despite what you might think, liquor does not make everything better.”

“No, it’s not alcohol.” He held up her phone.

“The battery’s dead,” she moped and turned away, too sadden by the death of her beloved phone to want to look upon its empty carcass.

Music came to her, muffled through the blankets and possessing that oddly hollow quality only really crappy speakers can produce. It was a guitar. An electric guitar being strummed in hard, violent bursts. A sound so unmistakably _not_ 1940s that Darcy shot to her feet, abandoning her safe and plushy cocoon. “YOU FIXED IT!”

“Not entirely,” Stark clarified apologetically, rubbing the back of his neck. “I couldn’t mold a compatible male plug to fit the built-in female port. The wires had to be soldered directly to the –“ His explanation ended in a grunt as she squeezed the life from him in the most appreciative hug she had ever given anyone in her life. She considered kissing him, but decided that even her phone wasn’t worth such trauma. It’s not like he saved her life or anything.

She pressed his face between her hands. “You are fabulous! Now get to sciencing my other problem.”

“Lewis,” he said calmly, pulling her hands into his. “I can’t right now. I have to _science_ for the government.”

“You’re a genius. You can science for both of us!” she insisted. “Science for Uncle Sam after breakfast. Science for Darcy after lunch. See, easy. Time management is very important.” She looked at him meaningfully, noting his scruffy face and rumpled clothes. “You’ve not been managing very well, have you?”

He shrugged. “I get caught up. I used to have an assistant, but he got drafted.”

“Like it’s that hard to find a new one. Assisting is easy. I know. I was an assistant – said so on my Stark Industries badge and everything,” she grinned proudly.

“Stark Industries?” Howard repeated. “You work for me?”

“Nope. I work for your son… well, technically his girlfriend, who took over when he quit to be a superhero. She is so kickass. Not literally. She doesn’t actually kick anyone’s ass, although I’m sure she could if she wanted to because she is that kickass.”

Stark stared at her a moment. “So,” he said slowly as he translated the Darcy-speak, “you work for Stark Industries, which until recently was headed by my _son_ ,” he paused as if his having a child was the most unbelievable portion of the sentence, “who is a now _superhero_.”

“Totes. Don’t worry. He doesn’t wear tights or a cape or anything dorky. He runs with a really cool crowd – scientists and demi-gods and Captain America and – ” She gasped as her finger shot out and jabbed him in the chest. “ _Captain America!_ That’s why New Jersey sounded familiar!”

“Whatever I’m doing in New Jersey is classifie—“

“Super soldiers! You’re building super soldiers!” She danced around the room excitedly.

“How in the hell could you possibly know that? Even if we succeed, there’s no way that would become public knowledge even by your time,” he insisted. “Dammit, Phillips will have my ass if he finds out some broad living in my house knows all this.”

Jarvis cleared his throat from the doorway. “Perhaps if Miss Lewis were someone of importance in your company, she would be granted clearance to know,” he suggested, pausing in feigned deliberation. “Your personal assistant, perhaps.”

Darcy’s lips quirked into a devious smirked. “I knew there was a reason I liked you, J.”

“Me, too,” Stark agreed, his smirk rivalling hers. “Very well, Miss Lewis, you’re hired.” He held out his hand to seal the deal. Darcy was sure she should feel some trepidation about accepting the job, but she was just so freaking happy that she’d have something to do, that she’d be there to make sure he worked on her problem, that she might get to meet Captain America before he was cool – oh, would her secretly fanboy hipster friends be jealous if they knew.

She took the offered hand and shook it.

Almost immediately, Stark’s smile fell and his eyes turned calculating as he looked at her. “If you’re going to help, start now. We’re heading to Brooklyn in an hour. Get dressed, you look like a bum.”

“You’re one to talk,” she snorted.

“Yeah, but I’m relying on you to turn heads and keep people from looking at me. I’m famous. If they see me in Brooklyn, they’ll know something’s up,” he reasoned. “So get dolled up.”

“Asshat,” she muttered, but couldn’t dispute his logic.

She put on the blue dress Hildy seemed especially approving of for its power in bringing out the color of her eyes, pinned her hair back at the temples and used the makeup she had found in the bathroom. Having dealt with his wandering hands on their first meeting, she really wasn’t all the surprised that the man kept a supply of fresh makeup in stock in every spare bathroom in the house – she checked; it really was in each bathroom.

Stark met her by the stairs, his face drawn as he looked her over.

“Dolled up enough for you?” she asked and did a little twirl (ironically, of course).

He offered a noncommittal shrug. “It’s a start.”

He opened the door and held it for her, following her out to the driveway where the silver Oldsmobile was waiting for them. “No Jarvis?”

“A man and a woman together aren’t generally worth noticing. Three people walking into the same shop together is too suspicious,” Stark said with a shake of his head. “We’re trying not to draw any more attention to the installation than necessary. No mean feat when building a secret army bunker in Brooklyn.”

Brooklyn. Steve Rogers’ old stomping ground. Or rather, his current stomping ground. Darcy bounced in her seat at the prospect of being there when Captain America was made.

“Tone it down. You’re too excited.”

“Sorry,” she said, but her contrition was quickly swallowed up by her enthusiasm. “No, I’m not! This is so freaking cool!”

He shook his head and turned his face away, but not before she saw the smile tugging at his mouth. She could have called him on it, snarked and sassed until that smile disappeared, but she thought he earned that smile. He was helping to build Captain America; he kind of deserved some props for that.

“So,” she said, drawing it out in the way she always did when trying to remain calm in the face of something tremendously amazing. “Do you have your super soldier guinea pig picked out yet?”

“That’s what today is about.” He looked her way, brow quirked and eyes narrowed. “You want to cut out hours of debilitating boredom and just tell me who my guy is?”

“I _could_ , but then you might skip over something that turns out to be vitally important and end up killing him instead of turning him into Captain America. I cannot have that. Captain America is too cool to be killed.” She pointed a warning finger at him. “Do your job right, Stark!”

“Fine, no shortcuts. Geez.”

“That’s better.” She hummed smugly to herself as they drove into Brooklyn. “So, when’s the actual supering of the soldier going to happen?”

“June 22nd,” he said. Before she could ask, he added, “Today is only May 13th.”

She pouted at the news. “Bummer.”

The car rumbled to a stop in front of a small green grocer. Stark pulled the key from the ignition and turned to her, leaning in and putting his arm on the back of the bench seat. “Don’t pull away. We’re meant to look like a couple,” he jerked his head toward the window where people were sitting around or walking past their car. “There will be some brass in there, Colonel Phillips at least, maybe a few others. At this stage, a new face will make them nervous. They might ask questions. Don’t give them too much, and don’t…” He paused in search of the right word to explain all her Darcyisms.

“Sass?” she suggested.

He nodded, barely smiling. “Yeah.”

“I can do that. What? I totally can.”

“If you can pull this off, I promise I’ll spend the rest of the day sciencing just for you.”

“Sweet talker,” she cooed and pretended to swoon. “Come on, I want to see where Captain America was born!”

He shook his head in amusement, gestured for her to stay in the car, then walked around to her door to open it for her, putting her hand on his arm to cement the idea of their being a couple. “Such manners,” she cried. “Where were they when you had your hand on my ass?”

“As I recall, you threw yourself at me.” He nudged her gently and let his voice lift into a falsetto, “’Oh, Mr. Stark, I need to talk to you. Can I see you tonight?’ You know how often I hear that? And what it’s usually a code for? Plus you were wearing those cute little short pants.”

“I will punch you again,” she warned.

“You could, but then I’d spend the rest of the day with a steak on my face instead of sciencing for you.” He levelled her with a look of pure smug condescension.

“Stop trying to logic me into behaving, asshat.”

“I’m starting to take that as a compliment. Ah, here we are.” He pulled her into an antiques shop, where he pretended to consider an old vase. He held it for her to look at, then set it down before she could do anything more than ‘hm’ about it. They moved closer to the register, where a young woman counted out a payment for a book she was buying. When the door finally shut behind the woman, the shop owner approached them. She was an old woman in soft colors and a hand-knit shawl, but the overall impression Darcy got from her was one of sternness. She was probably a retired school teacher.

The old woman offered a congenial smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Wonderful weather this morning, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, but I always carry an umbrella,” Stark replied, though anyone with eyes could see that he did no such thing. Darcy opened her mouth to call bullshit but got an elbow to the ribs and a pointedly raised eyebrow before she could speak.

The owner nodded and walked away toward the register, her hand sliding beneath the counter.

“Come on,” Stark said and pulled Darcy deeper into the shop, through a tasseled curtain into a small back room. It took a moment of standing stupidly for the entire wall full of books to shift and reveal a hidden door.

“Oh, this is so James Bond. I love it,” she squealed quietly until he squeezed her arm, indicating she was overdoing it again. “I’m good. I’m calm.”

A mountain of a man blocked their path, his khaki shirt filling Darcy’s entire field of vision. She looked up into an emotionless face topped by a polished white helmet with the letters MP on it. “Hello, soldier,” she said, trying very hard not to sound sassy.

“Stark, I have told you repeatedly not to bring dates to my army installations,” a hard voice barked from behind the wall of MP. “Especially not the secret ones.”

“Colonel Phillips.” Stark smiled and released Darcy, stepping around the MP and disappearing from her view. “This is my assistant, Miss Lewis.”

“Step aside, son,” the man ordered, and the MP obeyed, snapping off to the side of the corridor as if yanked there by some unseen force. The colonel stood before her, nowhere near as large but far more intimidating than the MP had been. He eyed her up and down, scowling as he did.

“I assure you, Miss Lewis is a woman of considerable trust and hidden talents,” Stark said.

“Stark, you can discover her talents all you want, just not on Uncle Sam’s dime and not on my army base,” Phillips drawled. He eyed Darcy again. “She been vetted? Signed the non-disclosure agreement?”

Howard nodded his head to both, though Darcy had done no such thing. It was enough to satisfy the man; he turned and moved down the tiled corridor with Stark in tow.

Stark waved for her to follow them.

“Erskine is already here. He’s brought his shortlist,” Phillips reported, his tone making it obvious that he disliked this Erskine’s choices even more than he did Darcy. “I’m relying on you to get this point across, Stark: What we need is a _soldier_.”

“Of course,” the man agreed instantly.

“You are vital to this operation. Erskine will listen to you. Make something up if you have to, but I will not risk months of planning and groveling on a ninety-pound asthmatic.” The man stopped and jabbed Stark in the chest with enough force to send him back a step. “Be persuasive.”

“I’m very good at persuasive.”

Darcy tailed them past countless more sentries, each as much of a mountain as the first, through four sets of doors and around  a room that looked as if it might once have held a swimming pool but now was filled with half-installed electronics.

“How’s it coming?” Stark called.

A white-coated technician shouted up a reply. “On schedule, Mr. Stark.”

Darcy craned her neck as they all walked on, determined to see everything she could. It was just a chaotic jumble of metal, wires and gauges, but it was one of the coolest things she had ever seen if only because she knew what it would do when it was assembled. She felt the smile growing on her face. Stark’s hand was on her elbow again, squeezing it gently; ‘calm down’ he was telling her, and she tried very hard to listen.

The tour ended in a conference room tiled in the same institutional green as the rest of the secret base. It contained a large wooden table with six chairs, only one of which was occupied.

“Coffee,” Colonel Phillips said as he sat down. “No milk, no sugar.”

“He’s talking to you,” Stark whispered before joining him at the table. “I’ll have one as well, Miss Lewis,” he said, tilting his head toward the coffee pot on a small table to her right. “Milk, no sugar. You know how I like it. Surprise me.” His eyes were positively exploding with delight, all but laughing with the message he was sending her way: ‘You’re an assistant now, so assist’.

She managed to keep from stomping to the table where the coffee pot sat on a warming plate surrounded by the makings of a small breakfast – oranges, jam, butter, whiskey. Narrowing her eyes over her shoulder, she made up the coffees, pouring a bit of everything into Stark’s regardless of what he had actually requested. Her smile was terrifyingly large when she set the cup before him. “Mr. Stark.”

“Miss Lewis,” he said in lieu of thanks, taking a sip and spitting the liquid back into the cup. “Dammit, Lewis!”

“You said to surprise you,” she said, crossing her arms and lifting an eyebrow in challenge.

“Can we get on with it? I do have an army division to run,” Phillips barked. Darcy did not miss smirk in the corner of his mouth as he looked her way.

An older man shifted in his seat. Darcy hadn’t paid him much attention aside from noting that he was there, but now he was taking command of the meeting. It was clear from the way the other men leaned toward him as he spoke that he was someone very important to the project.

“Yes, I have made my selection,” Erskine insisted.

“Not Rogers,” Phillips interrupted. He slapped a file down before Stark, jabbing at the papers clipped within. “Hodge, Gilmore. He’s a soldier, follows orders. He’s what we need.” He slapped another file down. “Withers, Charles. Strong, fast, follows orders.”

Stark studied the two files. “They’re very good soldiers, Dr. Erskine.”

“There is more to this than simply following orders,” the doctor insisted with a put-upon sigh.

“Doctor, we’re aware of your opinion,” the colonel said, “but to win a war, we need _soldiers_. That is what this project is about.”

“Who would you pick, Doctor?” Stark asked diplomatically.

Erskine produced a file of his own, handing it across the table to him. Stark studied it with the same consideration as he had the others. “How did this kid even get a 1A?”

“I gave it to him,” Erskine shrugged. “He possesses the necessary mental characteristics this project requires.” He spoke with such absolute certainty it was a wonder anyone would be willing to dispute him, but dispute they did. Phillips all but tore the file in half and threatened to have the kid kicked out of the army. Neither man was going to relent. That much was clear.

After forty minutes of the same arguments being thrown between the two, Stark glanced Darcy’s way, his eyes pleading. “So, these are the only candidates? Charles Withers,” Stark read the name, glancing up at Darcy, who shook her head ever so slightly.

“Gilmore Hodge.” Again she shook her head.

“Or Steven Rogers.” She nodded enthusiastically, offering a thumbs-up and an enormous smile.

Stark gave a nod of understanding so minute that it seemed more for himself than for her. “Well, I understand what you are looking for Colonel. I see what you do in these soldiers,” he said, his voice strong and commanding. “But I know what this serum can do. We should go with Steven Rogers.”

He met her eye again as she grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am running with the story that while Captain America's backstory is well known and the stuff of Smithsonian exhibits, some details were left out for matters of 'national security', specifically Camp Lehigh. ...otherwise they'd have national monumented the sh*t out of that place instead of mothballing it and using it to hide eZola. Amiright?


	8. The Golden Standard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stark is a bit of a jackass.

It had been almost five weeks since her first visit to Brooklyn Antiques and the super secret army installation it disguised. She had been seven times since then, each time security was a little bit tighter. As the June 22nd deadline approached, Stark spent less time acting the playboy and more time showing off his science. When there was only a week to go, Darcy’s life became quite familiar as she spent her days making sure Stark slept, ate and, oh sweet merciful gods above, _bathed_ regularly.

Project Pop Tart, as she had named their efforts to send her home, was put on hold in favor of Project Rebirth. The concession wasn’t entirely altruistic. Darcy really wanted to meet Steve Rogers before he became Cap.

Before the unfortunate wormhole incident, Darcy had been bouncing with excitement at the prospect of meeting Captain America; the Tower had been buzzing with the news that the hero was coming. Every scientist, assistant, grunt and intern knew he was moving in, though no one could say which apartment would be his. Darcy secretly hoped the empty apartment next to hers would soon have a super new occupant, but there were plenty of others he might move into. With only a few days until his arrival, Darcy had planned a huge welcome party in the communal kitchen on her floor and spent way too much time watching the Cap’s old propaganda movies. She was a sucker for a loveable hero. Getting to see his humble origins was her personal Holy Grail, Bodh Gaya and Western Wall.

“T-Minus?” she asked.

“Forty-two hours,” Stark replied. He leaned back in his chair, sighing and pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

“Sleep?” she suggested.

“I’ll sleep when this is done. I’d hate to miss something and kill Captain America.” He offered her a smart, though rather exhausted, grin.

She knew he had no idea who Captain America was, but he still made reference to him when they were alone. The fabled Captain had become something that spurred him on in the rare moments he lost faith in his own genius; he would turn to Darcy for reassurance that it really did work out, that his technology helped create the super soldier the army needed in the fight against Hitler and HYDRA. The Captain had also become something of an inside joke, during quiet moments like this one.

“Well, you’ll look like shit for the photog,” she commented and ran the back of her hand across the three days of stubble marring his face. “Seriously.”

“How can I resist such sweet persuasion?” he said dryly. “Let’s go.”

She led the way through the guarded corridors and out through the back of Bankside Music Store, the storefront beside Brooklyn Antiques and also an unwitting participant in the installation’s cover; the army had somehow managed to tunnel into their basement without any of the employees noticing. Starks’ black Lincoln was parked where she had left it around the corner earlier that day; part of her duties included running fake errands just so the car wouldn’t be sitting in the same spot all day long. It was tedious, and she hated parallel parking. It was the part of the job she would miss least.

“You’re driving,” Stark informed her as he slid across the seat to the passenger side. He slumped down, resting his head on the glass and pulling the brim of his hat so far down it touched his chin.

“Okay, but if you fall asleep in the car, you can stay here all night. I ain’t picking you up,” she warned as she pointed the car away from Brooklyn.

“Why not? You’ve knocked me on my ass enough times. It’s only fair you should pick my ass up once in a while.”

She snorted. “Lose some weight, then we’ll talk.”

“If I’m fat, it’s your fault,” he retorted and sent out a blindly aimed finger of accusation, managing to poke her in the face. “You’re the one who brought Pop Tarts into my house. I lived off coffee, cigarettes and science before you came along.”

“And sex,” she added.

“No, you have not brought any of that to my house. I still don’t know why. I’m handsome and rich and perfectly charming in every way,” he pushed the hat up just enough to give her a sidelong glance.

“You’re still an asshat.”

“Worth a shot,” he grunted and pushed the hat back down.

Darcy snorted again. “Quitter. Tony could’ve kept that up for at least another hour.”

“I am a very proud papa,” he muttered.

Over five weeks in, she still couldn’t tell if he was kidding when he said things like that. Not about the sex; she knew he was joking about that, but, when it came to Tony, she wasn’t sure. Somehow she thought he didn’t believe her when it came to his progeny. Understandable given his complete inability to focus on a single woman for more than a week. So far the only woman he had kept around for more than a few days was her; every other female of his acquaintance slapped him in the face and stormed off – be she employee or romantic liaison – after a very brief period. (The longest one had been seven days, four of which they weren’t even together since he had locked himself in his lab to work.)

“We’re here,” she said, pulling in alongside his Rolls.

“That’s nice.”

She left him leaning against the window and made her way into the house. “Hey, J.”

“Good evening, Darcy,” he greeted, his warm smile falling slightly when she closed the door behind her. “I trust Mr. Stark isn’t spending the night in Brooklyn.”

“Nah,” Darcy said, opening the fridge and eying what looked like might become her new favorite pie.

“I hope he hasn’t attempted to return to the penthouse,” the man fretted. “My efforts to remove Miss Cartwright proved rather disastrous. The police may need to be called.”

“Chillax, J. He’s in the car. Just too lazy to get out. Can I score some pie?”

“Of course. It was made specifically for you,” Jarvis said absently as he moved toward the door.

“Really? Awww, that’s totes sweet. Froggy is so awesome.”

“I will relay your sentiments.”

Darcy pulled the pie from the fridge, cutting into it with the kind of violent glee reserved for children on Christmas morning and serial killers in dark alleys. As Jarvis half-carried Howard through the kitchen, she groaned.

“You aren’t allowed to make those noises in my house unless I’m personally involved,” Stark reprimanded.

“Then grab a slice, Stark.” She pushed the pie toward him and took another bite, eyes rolling back in her head as the strawberry and chocolate filling touched her tongue. “OMG. This is seriously the best pie ever.”

When she moaned around her fork, Stark pulled himself to his feet and stole the pie away from her, taking the slice up by the crust and eating it with his finger. His self-satisfied grin fell as he released a noise that Darcy couldn’t quite describe; it lay somewhere between a groan and an exclamation of surprise.

“Miss Lewis, give the chef a raise,” Stark said as he left the kitchen, but not before grabbing a fork and the rest of the pie.

“He took the pie,” Darcy pouted. “I loved that pie. I named it Celia.” She stared longingly at the kitchen door.

Jarvis set a consoling palm on her shoulder. “I think that if you look closely, you may find Celia had a sister.”

Spinning around, she saw a devious glint in his eye. “Jarvis, you are the best!”

They split Celia’s sister. Jarvis took half home to Anna while Darcy took her well-earned section up to her room. She and Celia’s sister, unimaginatively named CC, spent a solid three hours getting to know one another while Darcy read a magazine and took a long bath. This trip over the rainbow bridge had its moments, and quiet evenings with Froggy’s pies were totally among the best. Dealing with Howard was definitely among the worst.

Case in point:

“Lewis! Hey, Lewis!” The man’s voice, nasal and irritating, was not what she wanted to hear first thing in the morning.

“What?” she shouted.

He called again through the door. “You up?”

“God, you’re worse than my brothers! Yes, I’m up because you woke me up!” She pushed a pillow down over her head and waited for him to go away. He didn’t.

“Lewis. Come on. I need you.” Even through the pillow he sounded closer.

“Are you in my room?”

“Technically, it’s my room. I own the house,” he reasoned.

“Not if I sue you for sexual harassment,” she groaned and rolled over, staring at him. “You’re still a mess. Go bathe, Stark. You smell.”

He sat down on the edge of her bed, either oblivious or indifferent to her criticism. “Remember I said I thought I was missing something? It was the insulators. We forgot to reinforce the insulators. I have to get to Brooklyn.”

“Dude,” she groaned, checking her phone. “It’s four in the morning. T-Minus is in like thirty-seven hours. You’ve got time to insulate after you take a damn bath.”

“If we don’t reinforce….” He kept talking, but Darcy wasn’t listening. She was used to panicky science babble from Jane and Erik and any number of the crazy geniuses who worked on their floor of Avengers Tower. Early in her days as an intern, she learned that when scientists got into this mindset, they really were only using her as a soundboard; her job was to repeat back what they said so they could hear it in another voice to make sure it sounded all sciencey and accurate. But it was four in the freaking morning, and she was not in the mood.

She stood and walked from the room, Stark followed mindlessly, still spouting science. He continued to talk all the way to the bathroom where she maneuvered him into the bathtub, turned the faucet on and shot him with the showerhead. It worked almost as well as a Taser.

“…conductive flow of _JESUS CHRIST THAT’S COLD!”_ Stark sputtered, his hands flying out to grab the showerhead from her. “Lewis, what the hell are you doing?”

“You smell. Shower.” She turned and padded back to her bed.

She was just beginning to fall asleep when it started raining inside her room. Blinking up at the obnoxious storm cloud, she sighed. “No, we are not driving back to Brooklyn tonight.”

Stark continued to lean over her, his hair dripping water onto her face. “You take all the fun out of my science. Did you know that? And I borrowed your safety razor.”

“Good, you looked like a crazy homeless person,” she muttered. “Now go away, you’re raining on me.”

He chuckled and promised he’d be back bright and early so they could go science together. Darcy squinted at him as he left, making sure he was really leaving and not just pulling some crazy genius ploy to get her out of bed. The details were lost without her glasses, but she could just make out his form at the edge of her room; she could also tell he was shirtless and wearing a towel and that he didn’t look half bad. Nowhere near as cut as Thor, but for a 1940s dude…

No. Do not go there.                     

She shut her eyes and rolled over, determinately refusing to consider the quality of tan or muscle definition of Howard ‘Grabby Hands’ Stark.

oOo

True to his word, Stark sent Jarvis in to rouse her just two hours later. While he was far more apologetic than Stark would have been, Darcy actually wished it had been Howard who came to get her. Then she could have punched him in his stupid face again and claimed she had been dreaming. Now who was ruining the fun?

“Almost the big day,” Stark grinned. For a man who had less than two hours’ sleep, he was irritatingly bright-eyed.

“And there was much rejoicing. Yay,” Darcy deadpanned.

“Not yet, but there will be once I get the insulators reinforced. I called the lab and Ricky’s hot-footing them over here.” Stark checked his watch.

“Who?”

“Ricky,” he repeated impatiently. “Short, blond, moustache.”

“That’s Andy,” Darcy correct. “He told me he’s worked for you for about five years.”

“I don’t know. Probably,” he shrugged.

Five years and he didn’t even know the technician’s name. She’s been with him for going-on six weeks and knew each tech, assistant and scientist who spent more than ten minutes in Stark’s presence. A thought popped into her head, one she should have known better than to voice given who she was walking to. She voiced it anyway.

“Stark, what’s my name?” she asked.

He looked up from his coffee as if confused by the question. “Your name? Mandy.”

He returned to his breakfast, eating in blissful ignorance of the looks both she and Jarvis were sending his way. After several minutes in which he, seemingly, felt none of the tension in the room, he folded his paper and left the table.

“I am sorry, Darcy,” Jarvis said as he collected the morning dishes. “Mr. Stark can be a bit thoughtless… among other things, but I believe he truly appreciates your presence.”

“No need to apologize, J. You didn’t do anything wrong. And I really don’t expect much from Stark.”

He paused in his work, standing to his full height as he turned to look her in the eye. “You should,” he said, his voice filled with more gravity and certainty than she had ever heard from him or his electronic successor. “Perhaps if there was at least one person who held him to a higher standard, Mr. Stark might finally rise to meet it.”

“Isn’t that what you’re here for?” She smiled, trying not to let him see how affected she was by his vote of confidence. “Besides, I’m not sticking around.”

“For which I will be eternally despondent.”

“J, you talk so pretty.”

“You just going to stand there chin-wagging all day?” Stark called from the hallway. “We’ve got places to be, science to do.”

“The basis of comparison is hardly worth mentioning,” Jarvis commented drily, one of his eyebrows rising in jest.

“And he warned _me_ not to be so sassy,” she grinned and gave his arm a punch as she passed.

Darcy met Andy in the garage, taking delivery of the insulators and helping to load them into the back of one of Stark’s cars. Without a word to the man who had worked for him for five years and who had just dropped everything for him at six o’clock in the morning, Stark hopped into the car and started the engine.

“I’m told you get used to him,” Darcy said to the short blond man.

“Like a carbuncle,” Andy agreed.

She didn’t even bother hiding her smile.

“What are you two getting so friendly over?” Stark inquired when she pulled the car door shut behind her.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Darcy told him. When he just sat looking at her for a long moment, she turned her condescending eye on him. “Are we going or should I get out and walk to Brooklyn?”

“In those shoes?”

“You underestimate me, Stark.”

“That is one thing I will never do, Lewis,” he assured her and put the car into gear.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel the need to apologize in advance for any future delays in posting updates. The school year is about to start and I am setting up my very first classroom. I am equal parts excited and terrified. Wish my luck! I'm going to need it.


	9. How Quickly Things Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which history and heroes are made.

“T-Minus?”

“Four hours.” Stark checked his watch to make sure it had been wound; as if Jarvis would have neglected something like that. His hand moved around the place setting before him, touching his fork, the plate, his coffee cup, knife and then starting at his watch and the fork again. He was anxious, desperate for something to do, but breakfast was winding down and all he could do was wait. And fidget.

“I’m close enough to done,” Darcy said. “Let’s go.”

He leapt to his feet. “Thank god. I’ll go get the car.”

“Sir, I would recommend a trip to the washroom first.”

“I’m fine.”

“Really, Sir—“

“Jarvis, I promise, I’m a big boy. I don’t have to use it every time I leave the house.”

“You’ve got egg in your moustache, moron,” Darcy told him.

He ran the napkin across his mouth and glared down at the soiled linen. “Well, why didn’t you just say that, Jarvis?” He threw the napkin down onto the table and hurried from the room.

“I should have let him get his photo taken with an egg-stache,” she commented.

“I’m certain someone else would have told him,” the butler said. His face pulled down in a thoughtful frown as he added, “Presuming there is someone whom Mr. Stark has yet to offend beyond desire for petty retribution.”

“That’s a very short list, J.”

“Grows shorter by the day.”

“I best get ready,” Darcy sighed. “Anything on my face?”

“Nothing,” he assured her with an earnest smile. “You look lovely, as always.”

“You spoil me, Jarvis.” She pulled him in for a hug, her arms wrapping around him in a tight squeeze and something hard pressing into her face, making her frown. She pulled back and prodded the man’s chest. “What is in your pocket?”

“Ah, terribly sorry,” he muttered, fishing into the inside pocket of his jacket and removing a small package. “Mr. Stark had me collect this. Given your long hours, I haven’t had a moment to present it to you.”

The package was little more than an oversized envelope, not particularly heavy, but something inside was stiff. Her fingers itched to open it, but her discovery was interrupted when Howard called from the hallway. Sighing, she shoved the package into her purse and stalked from the house.

“For a man who once asked if I was raised by wolves, you’ve got lousy manners, you know that?” she said as she slammed the car door shut.

“You love me and you know it, doll-face,” he grinned and gunned the engine, sending the back wheels squealing on the flagstone driveway and Darcy lurching back on the bench seat. “Hold on tight.”

“Raised by wolves,” she muttered under her breath.

“I can’t help it, I’m too excited. We’re doing something unprecedented. If this works – and you keep telling me it will – we’ll be making history, changing the course of a war and the world with it.”  His smile grew enormous as he spoke, his eyes growing so large the whites were completely visible all the way around his irises.

“I’m happy you’ve got a boner for science, really,” she assured him. “But until they add seatbelts to these things, you’ve got to keep your science-gasms out of the car. ‘Kay?”

Those round eyes glanced over his shoulder at her. “Does everyone talk so filthy where you’re from? Or is it just you?”

She offered him a cheeky grin and settled back in the seat as they careened toward Brooklyn.

The street was empty at so early an hour, but Stark cautiously pulled the car around the block and parked before Excelsior Cigar Shop. They hurried through the alley to the back entrance of Bankside Music and down a hidden staircase to the secret installation. It was barely seven in the morning, yet the place was already busy with activity and more personnel than Darcy had seen in the weeks she’d been coming here. The number of MPs had doubled, as had the number of technicians. Stark took off his coat and jacket and threw them to her, rolling up his sleeves and rubbing his hands together excitedly.

Darcy wasn’t going to lie, the science was amazing. She had been working with Jane and Erik long enough to know brilliant science when she saw it. The technology was different, older; after seeing Jane MacGyver together her own equipment from spare parts, aluminum foil and chewing gum (true story!), Darcy wouldn’t dare call this stuff primitive. Somehow watching them science with pencils, grid paper and slide rules made it more impressive than someone just pushing buttons and letting JARVIS do all the heavy math.

The capsule at the center of the room was fully assembled where just yesterday it had been littering the floor in great metal chunks. A thin technician was pushed into it and made to stand for an hour while his cohorts tinkered with the settings; just when it looked like they were done, they started rehearsing the whole procedure, locking the technician inside the cocoon to test the hydraulics of each injection arm and the great mechanics of the base that rotated the entire contraption from horizontal to vertical.

She tried not to get in the way, but there was so much to see and Stark kept calling her over. He rarely had a reason, only needed her as a soundboard to parrot back his words.  

“Lewis,” he said, fingers tapping against an open panel as he waited for her to appear. “That sequence… what was that sequence again?”

“Red, white, yellow, green, blue, black, orange,” she replied without pause, watching as Stark immediately slid the wires into the order she said. He had been muttering it in his sleep on the drive back to the mansion the night before. She hadn’t known for certain what it was about, but if he said it she would remember it. Darcy Lewis forgot nothing, a talent most learned to fear.

“All right. That’s it,” Stark said almost reverently, a far cry from the boastful shout she had anticipated.

As they were finishing their last system check, the room stilled. Darcy looked to see what had drawn everyone’s attention from their work. She saw an attractive brunette woman leading into the facility one of the skinniest men Darcy had ever laid eyes on.

Before the squeal of glee could work its way up her throat, there was a hand on her elbow; Stark reminding her to remain calm.

“I’m good,” she promised in a quiet whisper, though she was anything but. She was thrilled beyond any and all previously set record of excitement. This was the single coolest thing she had ever been involved in.

If she was the height of anticipation and glee, then scrawny Steven Rogers was the epitome of terror. He stood frozen at the railing, overlooking the lab and paling as all eyes continued to stare at him. If it weren't for the woman with him, he might have remained there for the duration of the war, but she took a step and he followed. The woman and skinny Steve Rogers descended the stairs, moving purposefully toward the capsule and Dr. Erskine. Darcy knew she didn’t rate any sort of pre-serum interaction, but she made a point of standing along their path just so she could say she had brushed shoulders with Steve Rogers before he became Captain America. They did that. And more.

At the slight bump of his shoulder against her arm, little Steve Rogers turned and offered a wide-eyed apology. Darcy bit her lip to keep from screaming and shook her head to dismiss the apology.

“There’s an observation booth,” Stark told her. “If you think you can contain yourself.”

“Shut it,” she said, her hard glare softening almost immediately. “If you manage not to kill him, I’ll talk Froggy into making another Celia Special for you.”

“And why exactly do I need you to talk my chef into making me anything?”

“Because he likes me better than he likes you.” She grinned and sauntered up the steps to watch history from the sidelines.

The suited men filed into the booth with her, speculating on what would happen in a way that made it sound as if they were placing bets. Slowly, they made their way to the chairs, sitting in agitated silence, leaning forward as Erskine spoke into the microphone and the nurses set the vials of unnaturally blue liquid into place on the machine. Poor Steve Rogers looked pained and slightly queasy, but he did what Colonel Phillips had wanted – he soldiered on. Stark was there, looking far more composed than he had for the previous week; he was a showman, and he had an audience now where before he had only Darcy and a handful of nameless (or misnamed) technicians.

All the equipment that they had spent weeks building glowed with life and purpose, technicians flitting between panels as the electricity began to flow and the experiment began. The lights in the installation grew blindingly bright, making it almost impossible to see. At the first scream from below, the other woman was up and out of the observation booth, but the experiment didn’t stop.

The lights sparked and dimmed and suddenly there he was. Captain America.

Darcy didn’t bother trying to contain her smile as she pressed a hand to the glass and studied the difference. She had seen many transformations in her day, before today the most impressive had been Thor after the return of his powers, but, through her first year of college, she had seen many skinny little freshmen bulk up into hunks courtesy of the abundant meal plan of the cafeteria and free gym. None of them compared to Steve Rogers. Taller and cut like marble, even his face had changed; filled out with muscles that finally matched the cut of his heroic jaw. It was breathtaking. 

Not caring that she might be unwelcome, Darcy hurried down the stairs. She wanted a direct comparison of Steve Rogers before and after. She ran forward, ostensibly to congratulate Stark, but really she wanted to bump her shoulder against Captain America. Before, her heels had her standing a solid inch taller than the man, leaving his shoulder to clip her deltoid. Now, as she hurried past him, her shoulder barely reached his bicep.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he apologized just as he had before.

“No,” she stammered out an answer, “no problem. You… did good.”

He offered a smile that managed to steal her breath away again.

“Whenever you’re done,” Stark muttered in her ear. “I thought you had a rule about flirting with us vintage models.”

“No, I just have a rule about flirting with you. And, besides, I so totally was not flirting. I was sciencing.”

“Is that what they call it where you’re from?” he questioned, a condescending eyebrow rising. He opened his mouth to say more, but never got the chance.

An explosion rang out, deafening in the small space and terrifyingly close. Darcy threw herself to the floor, ducking her head beneath her arms as debris showered down. She heard the chunks of glass and tile falling nearby, but thankfully did not feel a single piece hit against her. Gunshots followed, and screaming as someone fell. Darcy didn’t remember any of this from her history lessons. Why hadn’t they mentioned this?

“Rogers!” Colonel Phillips shouted. Darcy looked up in time to see the newly minted Captain America bolting up the stairs in his bare feet.

“What happened?” Stark demanded in a harsh whisper as he pulled her up to her feet. “Who was that?”

“How would I know?” she hissed.

“You have insider information, Lewis. Acts of sabotage might have been worth mentioning.”

“If I’d known about it, I might have,” she glared, wiping imaginary particles of debris from her clothes. “Not everything makes it into high school history textbooks, you know. Apparently, this is just a footnote no one bothers to read.” She gestured at the devastation and the body laid out on the floor. It didn’t feel much like a footnote while standing in the middle of it, when you had been in the same room as the dead guy and heard him crack jokes over doughnuts. She had really liked Erskine.

“Can we go?” she asked.

Stark shook his head. “They’ll need to debrief everyone. A spy got in, and they’ll be looking to find out how.” He looked suddenly nervous. “You came late to this party, Lewis. They’ll suspect you.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“I know that.” The comforting hand on her arm gave a gentle squeeze of reassurance. “Just run with the story you’ve been telling. They can’t disprove it.”

“They can’t prove it, either! What if they want proof of who I am?” she asked, panic constricting her lungs.

“I thought of that,” Stark informed her. “I called – Damn, I had Jarvis pick them up, but forgot to get them.”

Darcy reached into her purse and collected the package from that morning. “This?”

“See, this is why you’re my girl Friday. Go on, open it. I called in a favor,” he said, his voice barely audible.

As he spoke, she opened the package, pulling out a hard, oblong booklet, another booklet Darcy recognized as a passport and a small slip of paper. A quick glance showed her the paper was a New York driver’s license. “You got me a license?”

“And a passport. Even got you a checking account. There ought to be a birth certificate and social security card in there, too.”

She found the mentioned papers wedged into the book of checks, all notarized and signed as if she had been in the proper offices to have them made. “How can you even do all this?”

“I’m very rich and know many people,” he said.

Darcy stared down at the objects in her hands, amazed that he would have bothered but also terrified that it meant she was now an official 1940s person. The objects, so small and lightweight when she didn’t know what they were, suddenly felt like lead weights.

“Stark!” Colonel Phillips barked, drawing the man away.

Darcy continued to stare, even as she was buffeted by the crowd and herded by the MPs. Her eyes stayed fixed on the items Stark had given her. She looked without seeing them until her eye landed on the name: _Maria Jane Lewis._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not having studied political science, I looked up the requirements on my university’s website. Apparently very little history is involved in the major, and, at my school anyway, most history courses could be exempted by passing an admissions history exam. So I’m running with the idea that all the history Darcy knows, she picked up in high school. 
> 
> Also, I survived my first two days of teaching. That's all I have to say about that.


	10. Essential Personnel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy panics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started italicizing Darcy's thoughts. I realized it was a little awkward without it. I'll go back and change the previous chapters when I get the chance.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” she breathed as she read the name again, hoping it might have changed in the time it took her to blink.

Maria Jane Lewis.

No, still the same.

From across the decades, Jane’s voice came to her. _‘…his assistant. Her name was Lewis, too, funnily enough. Maria Lewis.’_

Maria Lewis, Stark’s assistant… a job she already possessed.

Maria Lewis with the fabulous taste in coats… coats which were tailored perfectly to her oddly proportioned body.

Maria Lewis, who left walking directions to exactly where Darcy needed to go.

 _Fuck, I am so dumb_ , she thought and threw her head back against a wall, not caring that it was cement with a cushioning layer of ceramic tile. It hurt like hell.

“Lewis,” Stark said. “Are you all right? You look sick.”

She turned her eyes to him, not bothering to lift her head from the wall. He was looking at her with concern, his eyes surveying every inch of her for damage. All her trauma was internal, however, so there was nothing for him to see.

She felt so stupid for not catching on sooner. She knew Howard Stark had an assistant named Lewis. Given that he couldn’t remember her name, she ought to have known he would invent an identity for her using the wrong first name. But why Maria? It was her middle name, yes, but only Jarvis knew that. Maybe it was the first one that came to him. Maria was a common enough name; she and Tony had debated that months ago when he quizzed her on her lineage.

The air pulled from her lungs as if she had been punched.

Maria. Lewis. The only two things she and Tony had in common. Maria Lewis, his mother’s maiden name.

“Are you going to faint?” Howard asked.

“No, but I might hurl,” she muttered, daring to look at him again, seeing past his concern to the mark on his collar. Not lipstick. “You’re bleeding.”

His hand flew to his neck and came away red. “Yeah, the explosion.”

“I wasn’t hit,” she commented in a desperate bid to think about something else, anything else. As per usual, the gods weren’t listening.

“Well, I was standing over you. I took all your shrapnel for you because I am a stand-up guy and all around gentleman.”

At the sight of his smile, one clearly designed to comfort her, she groaned and sunk to the floor. Why did he have to go and tell her that? Now she had pictures floating through her head of him huddled protectively over her. That’s not how she wanted to think of him. He was Howard ‘Grabby Hands’ Stark, a thoughtless, selfish, childish womanizer, not a man who threw himself over a woman during an explosion. That was the stuff of loveable heroes, the stuff that made Darcy’s knees weak and filled her with the warmth of a thousand puppies chasing butterflies through a rainbow-filled meadow. She did not want that feeling associated with Howard Stark because it made the idea of Darcy ‘Maria’ Stark all that more plausible.

His interpersonal ineptitude left him flapping his hands uselessly in the air. Whether it was in an attempt to fan her or from not knowing what to do with himself, she wasn’t sure. His words made her think it might be the former as he observed, “You’re in shock.”

“Damn right I’m in shock,” she muttered. There was nothing quite so shocking as learning you are the mother of Iron Man.

 _Oh, fuck, I’m Tony’s mom!_ she hit her head against the wall again.

“Stark, that woman of yours,” Phillips called. “Bring her over. Now.”

“Sorry, Lewis,” Stark apologized, pulling her to her feet and leading her to that tiled conference room where she had helped him pick Steve Rogers as their super soldier. He set her down at the table, bringing over a glass of water in an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“Leave, Stark,” the colonel ordered. It took a moment and an MP to force the man from the room, but soon she and the stone-faced Colonel Phillips were alone at the table.

“Name," the man demanded in a clipped bark. It was a tone she heard often but never directed at her.

“Lewis.”

His eyes narrowed as he leaned in, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “I had my lead scientist shot inside my secret army installation. I am not in the mood for games. Your full name.”

“Maria Jane Lewis,” she said, tasting the bitter bile on her tongue.

“Date of birth.”

“August 8th,” she said, pausing to remember what the driver’s license had read, “1920.” That made her twenty-two. She had travelled back in time, lived for months in 1943 and was still younger than when she started.

Phillips scowled across the table at her, barking out questions which she answered with stilted, stuttered words. Mostly it was shock, but some of the hesitation was her pausing to remember the information made up over the course of the past six weeks or that which she had only just learned from Stark’s forged documents. She was suddenly from Bridgeport, Connecticut, a town she had never even heard of before reading it on the papers now in her purse. Her mother’s name was Louisa Cooper-Lewis, not Sarah Gardener-Lewis. Her father, Richard and not Milton.  It was too much. The explosion and Erskine’s death would have been sufficient, but throw an interrogation and _son_ into the mix and Darcy was ready to run screaming.

“Empty your purse,” Phillips said.

“Why?”

“A man just detonated a bomb with a cigarette lighter. I am not taking any chances,” he said brusquely, a finger jabbing at the tabletop. “Purse. Empty. Now.”

Darcy put the bag on the table. An MP stepped forward, unlatched it and tipped it upside down, sending the contents scattering across the polished wooden surface in front of the colonel. The man sifted through the mess with the tip of pencil, finally lifting the newly printed identification papers, studying them.

“I don’t know about most people, but I don’t usually go carrying copies of my birth certificate around with me,” he commented dryly, his raised eyebrow rivaling Jarvis’s.

Darcy paused, unsure what to say, though she was clearly meant to say something. “I was going to start looking for an apartment of my own after we were done today,” she said. “I thought I might need them.”

He nodded slowly. His posture seemed to have changed, though his tone was still suspicious. “Where are you looking?”

“SoHo,” she said. She didn’t even know if that area of the city was even considered residential in 1943. Things changed so rapidly in New York; for all she knew it was filled with operational factories instead of the artist lofts she knew in her day.

Phillips frowned, his eyes narrowed as he studied first the papers on the table and then her. “A young woman has no business down in SoHo,” he declared. He took a pen and jotted something down on his notebook, tearing the page out and handing it to her. “That’s the kind of place you ought to be. My niece lived there until last month. Tell the manager I sent you.”

Darcy accepted the note and her purse. “Can I go?”

“Send Stark in,” he said after a single, hard nod.

She offered a vague nod of her own in reply.

She found Stark just outside the door, knowing he would have been standing with his ear against it if the MP hadn’t been keeping him away.

“Well?” he demanded.

“The colonel wants you,” she said dully without pausing in her movement away from the interrogation. She walked, unthinking, up the stairs, through the door and out into the street. There were car parts littering the street, MPs in uniform and plain clothes milling around the wreckage and barricading witnesses and suspects. She kept walking on numb feet until the chaos was behind her, and all she heard was the routine sounds of daily life in New York.

She stopped, staring at a world where things were normal.

“Where to, lady?”

Darcy blinked and realized there was a taxi parked in front of her. She could get a ride back to the mansion; Jarvis would be there with Pop Tarts and a mocha latte. He would speak to her in that soothing way that made everything seem like it would be okay. She knew it wouldn’t be, though. She had proof of that in her purse in the name of Maria Jane Lewis.

“Uh,” she said, looking down at the paper Colonel Phillips had given her. He would be watching her, she was sure, seeing if she really was who she claimed. She would need to keep up appearances, find an apartment, if she wanted to quell his suspicions and remain free to go home.

The bitter aftertaste her new name had left in her mouth only further encouraged her to distance herself from Howard.

She read the scrawled address aloud, “140 East 106th Street.”

“That’s The Griffith,” the man commented. “I know the place. Hop in. It’ll run ya about a buck.”

Darcy checked her purse, found she had five dollars in crumpled ones. More than enough. “The Griffith, then,” she said and climbed into the back.

The yellow brick building, while not the tallest she had ever encountered, managed to intimidate her. Something about the thick pillars standing between no-nonsense arches reminded her of the buildings at college, the ones where the oldest and most respected professors glared down their noses at the students. Her impression, it turned out, was completely accurate, only instead of a wizened old man with elbow patches on his tweed jacket, there was a pinch-lipped woman looking down her nose through a pair of jeweled reading glasses.

“May I help you?” she said, her pretentious lock-jaw accent the sort that brought to mind bad impersonations of Julia Child.

Darcy cleared her throat. “Colonel Phillips suggested I inquire about a room here.”

The woman’s manner changed almost immediately. Her stiffness softened and something of a smile touched her still rather pinched mouth. “Ah, Colonel Phillips. Yes, his niece, Miss Rutherford, was a resident here at The Griffith for nearly two full years. She’s married now,” the woman said, stopping to look Darcy over. “Are you employed?”

“I work for Stark Industries,” she replied. “I’m a personal assistant.”

The woman nodded, eyes narrowing as she asked, “Do you plan on working there long?”

Darcy paused, wondering what sort of thing she was meant to say. Did she say ‘yes’ because she wanted to give the impression of having a secure paycheck with which to pay rent? Or did she say ‘no’ because the woman thought young ladies ought to be staying at home? “Not long. I’m only staying in the city until I can return home to my family.”

“Your husband?”

“No, I’m not married,” she said, quickly adding, “yet.”

That seemed to please the woman. She pulled a paper from the desk and slid it across the counter. “Normally, I would require an application and references, but Colonel Phillips is a man of great standards. His niece was an exemplary guest. I expect no less from you, Miss…”

“Lewis,” she supplied, the bile rising in her throat again as she gave her full false name. “Maria Lewis.”

“Very well, Miss Lewis. Welcome to The Griffith.”

Darcy signed the contract, wrote out a check with her new checkbook and was given a key to her new fully furnished apartment after a surprisingly long lecture on expectations at The Griffith.

She fell onto the daybed, buried her face in the horrid floral bedspread, and seriously considered crying.

“I don’t want to be Iron Man’s mother,” she told the painting of a noble horse and his weak-chinned rider.

It was only two o’clock in the afternoon, but Darcy curled into a ball and fell asleep.

oOo

Morning came, bringing with it the unfortunate realization that she would have to face Stark. She groaned and rolled from the bed, annoyed that she had slept in her only outfit, which was wrinkled beyond any acceptable measure. It was all she had, though, so she made herself as presentable as possible and headed down the stairs to work.

The hotel manager, Miriam, furnished her with directions to the nearest train line. Darcy was at Stark Industries R&D facility faster than she had expected, though without the home made Pop Tarts to which she had become accustomed; the continental breakfast at The Griffith wasn't half bad if one didn't mind the chemical tang of powdered eggs. Being a child reared on processed, pasteurized food products, Darcy didn't mind one bit. What she really needed was coffee.

A need that only grew as she stepped through the doors of Stark's office and found the man standing, arms crossed and face red with fury.

“Where the hell have you been?” Stark shouted before she could even muster the courage to offer a greeting. “I had Jarvis scouring half of Brooklyn for you!”

“And what were you doing?” she muttered.

“Scouring the other half, obviously. You just left. A spy destroys our installation, kills Erskine and you just left!” He was pacing his office now, raking a hand through his hair, which had been sticking up at odd angles since she walked in the door. “I thought HYDRA had kidnapped you! Where the hell did you go?”

“My new apartment,” she said, picking up a file and heading toward the door. She was in no mood to deal with him or look at him so disheveled from being up all night because of her; the safest place for her right now, was as far from Howard Stark as was humanly possible. Howard disagreed. He blocked her path, his face dark and mouth made tight by his clenched jaw.

“Your _what_ now?”

She repeated herself slowly, knowing it irritated him. “My. New. Apartment.”

“When did this happen? When were you planning on telling me?” he demanded.

“Yesterday. And I just did,” she pushed him aside.

“You can’t just decide these things on your own, Lewis.”

“You aren’t my fucking husband!” she shouted. _Not yet_ , a snide little voice in her head muttered. She ignored it and pressed on. “It’s bad enough I’m stuck working for you, watching you spend your time sleeping your way through the city instead of figuring out a way to send me home. I don’t need to be at your beck and fucking call twenty-four/seven. I’m not your god damn servant!”

His mouth flapped mutely for a moment, probably more shocked that she was actually yelling at him than anything else. “Lewis, I don’t think about you that way. But I don’t want you wandering the city.”

“I noticed that,” she agreed with a scathing laugh, “when you had Jarvis escorting me around for the first week.”

“It was just a precaution,” he hedged. He at least had the courtesy not to lie about it.

“Well, it stops now. I’m moving to The Griffith.”

“No, actually, you’re not,” he said. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and held it out to her. “We’re flying to England tonight. Colonel’s orders. The SSR is taking the fight to HYDRA.”

Darcy read the memo, a brief but pointed command to take any and all necessary equipment and personnel to some coordinates that she presumed were in England and to await further instructions. “I’m ‘necessary personnel’?”

“I would dub you as ‘essential’,” Stark assured her, daring to smile, though only a little one.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit to some dissatisfaction with this chapter. Darcy's move to the Griffith and her return to work seem a bit stilted to me, but I couldn't find another way to get from point A to point B without it, and didn't want to get dragged into a flowery description of things we already know. (Honestly, we've all watched Agent Carter... Do I really need to write a three paragraph description of the manager and the rooms? Methinks not.) I'm sure a good Beta/Editor could have coaxed me through it, but I ain't got one!
> 
> So I hope you like this chapter, such as it is. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think. I've never written in this universe before and would love to know that I'm doing it justice. (It will make the three other Darcy/Bucky stories I'm slowly piecing together a lot better, too!)


	11. AWOL/MIA

The lab was worryingly quiet. Normally, Darcy knew Stark was there, tinkering or reverse-engineering or whatever he did. The HYDRA submarine they had pulled from Upper Bay and shipped clear across the Atlantic had become his new baby, occupying his sole focus for hours and days at a time. Not today, though. Today he was gone, the lab silent.

That wasn’t right. She knew his schedule better than anyone, being the one who arranged it and ensured the man kept to it, and according to that schedule Stark was supposed to be in his lab, working.

Darcy turned and walked back through the doors, past the MPs as sturdy and thick as the brick pillars they stood near.

“Where’s Stark?” she asked.

Margery, the blonde Women’s Auxiliary Corpsman that acted as some sort of secretary to Colonel Phillips, raised a bored eyebrow and pouted. “A.W.O.L.”

“He’s not in the army,” Darcy observed. “How can he be absent without leave?”

“No, AWOL: A Wolf On the Loose,” the woman clarified and jerked her head to the side, indicating a closed door to her left.

“Again?”

The woman shrugged; Stark’s appetite was old news to her. Darcy wondered how soon after arriving in England she had fallen prey to the wolf, being easily the prettiest woman in the facility.

“When he’s done, tell him I’m in the lab doing his job for him,” she sniped. “Might also want to mention that lab technicians make double what I do and a raise might be in order.”

She didn’t wait for a reply, just glared her annoyance at the door as she stalked past.

Four months. _Four months_ since Captain America was born. Stark had insisted that once they tested the serum and proved it worked, he would be free to begin calculations on her wormhole. Yet four months had passed, and he hadn’t spent more than fifteen minutes on her problem. Stark was like the worst combination of Ben and Bing she could have imagined; when he wasn’t obsessing over the HYDRA sub, he was chasing a piece of ass. It was as disgusting as it was disturbing; especially in light of the whole Maria Lewis/Stark thing for which Darcy had yet to come up with a suitable code name, though _Operation Hurl Chunks_ was being seriously considered.

The one bright star on the horizon that made the aggravation and disgust worth tolerating was the promise of Captain America. In just a few days he would turn from Captain Booty-Shorts into a bona fide superhero. The poster on the wall of the pub where she drank on her rare night out read that his European USO tour was on its way, and, once he was in Europe, he would become a hero. She couldn’t wait!

Unfortunately, she had no one to share her excitement with since Stark was busy being an asshat.

“Ah, there you are,” Stark said, clearing his throat and adjusting his tie. “I was just gathering some, uh, intel.”

“Lipstick,” she said dully, gesturing to his collar and pulling open the bottom drawer of her desk, a stack of pressed shirts inside. She shrugged off the thanks he offered and commented, “Captain America is coming.”

“I’ve seen the poster,” he said dismissively, stripping the marked shirt off and throwing it at her desk. “I don’t know why you’re so thrilled to see my greatest creation wasted hawking war bonds. It’s an affront to science.”

“Not what I’m excited about, and you’ve no right to talk about what offends science.” She lifted his soiled shirt with a pencil and held it up as a lawyer would Exhibit A.

“You mad about that? I’m just doing my duty. All the men are off at the front. I have to help keep morale up at home... and abroad.”

“You can do whatever you like to a broad,” she commented as a shudder ran through her as the thought of her becoming Mrs. Maria Stark flashed through her brain. _Hells no_. “Just not when it means you leaving your shirts on my desk.”

He took the stained shirt, throwing it into a trashcan as he moved to his drafting table. He considered the blueprints, fingers still working the buttons of his shirt. “So, I had a thought about the engine in th—“

“Stark,” she interrupted, dropping the stack of SSR files down on top of his plans. “Exactly when are you going to take five minutes to think about my Einstein-Rosen Bridge?”

He looked contrite. “Soon. This is important. We’re at war.”

“And will be for another two years,” Darcy informed him in a harsh whisper. “Five minutes won’t lose us the war. Trust me. America’s gonna kick ass with or without your help.” She pushed the file, _her_ file into his hands. “Five minutes.”

He hesitated, then set the file down with the others. “Later. Tonight. I promise.”

That promise was broken almost as soon as it passed his lips. The door to the lab swung open, an MP standing at attention to keep it from hitting the colonel on its return journey.

“Stark,” Colonel Phillips barked as he marched into the room. “Pack it up. We’re heading to the front. Our boys were captured outside Azzano.”

Stark hung his head, whether from the defeat to the Nazis or because he couldn’t keep his promise, Darcy wasn’t certain. “Of course, Colonel,” he replied, waiting for the man to leave before turning to her. “I’m sorry, Lewis, I—Why are you smiling?”

She hadn’t realized the smile had crept onto her face, taking root and sprouting into a full-fledged grin. Azzano, Italy. The 107th. This was it.

“I know something you don’t know,” she practically sang.

“Our boys have been taken captive by Nazis, most likely HYDRA, and you’re singing? That is hardly appropriate,” he gaped.

She scoffed. “Oh, like you’re one to talk about appropriate. Is there a woman in this installation you haven’t slept with?”

“Just you,” he replied, considering her thoughtfully.

“So not happening. Look away before I kick you in the balls.”

He laughed and pointed his eyes to the ceiling. “Yes, ma’am.”

“We ship out at 1900,” Darcy read off the memo from Phillips. “I would suggest bringing an airplane of your very own.”

“Why?” he asked.

She just smiled and hummed as she walked away.

“Dammit, Lewis, you can’t keep this stuff to yourself. I need to know,” he insisted, chasing after her as she gathered the necessary files. When he realized she had no intention of spilling her secrets, he breathed a resigned sigh. “Which plane?”

“Hm,” she said, considering the options. “A stealthy one. Barring that, a fast one.”

“The newest STK. See to it, Lewis,” he said with another sigh. “I don’t know why I bother arguing with you.”

“You’re a masochist. And an asshat.”

“But I science good, right?” He offered, glancing at her hopefully through the veil of his eyelashes.

“You used to,” she snorted. “Now you just play with other people’s science. It’s a little sad; I’m not gonna lie.” She shook her head at the wretched state of his science and left him gaping. They didn’t speak again until she was strapping herself into a seat of the sleek aluminum airplane, designation STK Model H2, which she had arranged to have fueled and waiting at the airstrip outside London.

“You’re smiling again,” Stark called over the engine noise.

It was true. That smile had been fighting to take over her face all afternoon; she had managed to keep it in check where it mattered, but it was just the two of them now, and she had forgotten to control that madly inappropriate grin.

“Captain America is coming,” she shouted back.

He shook his head again at her oddness and the misuse of his brilliance.

The smile stayed on her face across the Channel and France. It stayed in place as they landed on the rough airstrip the Army had carved into some poor farmer’s fields. It stayed until she stepped from the plane and saw what was left after the Battle of Azzano.

The soldiers who met them at the airstrip were gaunt in a way that had nothing to do with the amount of meat on their bones. Their hollow eyes gazed longingly at the shining airplane, no doubt wishing they could hop aboard and fly as far from the muddy battlefields as was humanly possible. They stood, stiff spines and rigid salutes, in ragged uniforms that no amount of spit shine could make presentable, looking nothing like anyone in those Captain America propaganda movies and more like the refugees she saw fleeing warzones on the news.

“This way, sir,” one soldier said, indicating the Jeep parked just off the strip.

None of the other soldiers they met along the checkpoints or on the makeshift base looked any better than the pair who had met them at the plane. Even Colonel Phillips looked downtrodden, his shoulders sagging with the weight of responsibility.

“Might as well head on back, Stark,” the man said with a heavy sigh. “No point in your being here; none of your gadgets can help. Our intel places our boys thirty miles inside enemy lines. We don’t have enough manpower left to risk a rescue.”

Stark’s question came out as an accusation. “You don’t have a contingency plan?”

“Winning the war, son. It’s the best contingency plan we have at this point,” he replied tersely, turning away to consider the map of the area pinned to the wall of his tent. The small flag marked ‘H’ for HYDRA was set several inches behind the jagged line of demarcation between Allied- and Axis-controlled terrains.

Stark looked to Darcy, his eyes practically pleading for something else he might try, his lips silently forming the words: _Two more years_. She nodded solemnly, which only made his shoulders slump further.

She turned from him, not wanting to see him dejected, for knowing he was so affected by the situation almost made her care for him. Instead, she looked at the world outside Phillips’ temporary office. This was familiar to Darcy. Not the frigid muddy camp or the haunted soldiers mindlessly marching in small battalions as if they were still at basic training. No, that was all terrifyingly new. It was the story she knew. The detention of the soldiers in Austria, all hope lost until Captain America proved his mettle by parachuting in and saving over 400 men, including his BFF, Sergeant ‘I’m So Sexy’ Barnes, with whom the Cap would share a bromance of epic proportions until they both fell in battle in 1945. Darcy remembered every word she had read in her high school history book, every black and white photo on the page; she remembered studying the images of Colonel Phillips, Howard Stark and the Howling Commandos, then looking around the room at the boys in her classroom, disappointed by the comparison.

“Nothing for it,” Stark sighed and headed out into the light drizzle.

“Miss Lewis,” a woman called, stopping Darcy from following. She remembered this woman, who made Eisenhower jackets look good and wore red lipstick like she was born for it. She was the one who had lead skinny Steven Rogers into the Brooklyn installation, who had run from the observation room when he had started screaming.

“Lewis, Agent Carter,” Phillips offered an absent-minded introduction without bothering to look away from his map.

The woman, Agent Carter, offered her hand in greeting. “Peggy Carter.”

“Maria Lewis,” she replied, the name rolling off her tongue a bit easier after four months of using it, though the slightest bit of acid did still crept up her throat.

“Yes, I know. You have Howard Stark’s ear, I wondered if you might pass something along for me,” Agent Carter said, leading the way from the tent. “It’s in regards to Project Rebirth, more specifically Steve Rogers.”

Darcy noted the use of his shortened name and the touch of pink that colored the woman’s cheeks as she said it. “Captain America?”

“That’s just it. He’s not being utilized to his full potential. Yes, he’s helping the war effort, boosting bond sales and enlistment, but he was meant for more,” she insisted.

“What do you think Stark can do about it?”

“He’s coming here in a few days – Steve, I mean. Keep Howard from leaving until he gets here,” Peggy said, her agitation growing as she spoke. “I know what Colonel Phillips said, and he’s right. There isn’t anything Howard can do to help right now, but I think that he could talk to Steve, to Colonel Phillips, then perhaps…” She trailed off, raising her hands up in a helpless gesture as her words failed her.

“I got this,” Darcy assured her.

“Really?”

“What? I wanted to see the show anyway,” she grinned.

“Thank you.” The woman took her hand again, not to shake it but to hold it in hers with something bordering on reverence. “Just… thank you.”

Darcy grinned as the woman left. Like she had any plans of missing this? Miss the booty shorts? The return of the 107th and ‘I’m So Sexy’ Barnes? Hells no! She was staying right where she was.

She found Stark in a large tent, his suitcase open on a cot. “Are you packing?”

“I’m putting away the alcohol,” he replied as he held a glass of Scotch in the air before downing it. “Not as if we can fly back tonight anyway.”

“Good, because we’re totally staying.” She dropped down into a chair, folding her arms defiantly.

“You heard Phillips. We’re useless here,” he said bitterly, clearly hating the idea that anyone would dismiss him as having no use. Almost as soon as he spoke, the shape of his spine changed, shifting from depressive slump to soldier straight as he turned on her. “There’s something you’re not telling me. You remembered something.”

“I forget nothing,” Darcy smiled.

“What’s happening?”

“Captain America.”

He groaned and poured a considerably larger amount of alcohol into his glass. “Again with Captain America. He’s coming to England later in the month, too.”

“No,” she said, drawing the sound out as she shook her head. “Sadly, that show and all the others will be cancelled after November… 4th? Yeah, the 4th.”

“That’s in eight days.”

She looked at her watch mockingly. “So it is!”

“Lewis—“

“You’re a smart man, Stark. Find something to do because we are so not going anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The shtick with Stark and the alcohol was shamelessly stolen from one of the Thin Man movies (go watch them!). 
> 
> Now on to some apologies. It may be some time before I can update again. I've been given until Halloween to find a new place to live, so I'm going to be hella focused on that. With luck I can find time at/after work, but I don't want to get called on misuse of school computers.... we'll see what happens. Wish me luck!


	12. Hopeful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy makes an unexpected discovery, and it totally rocks her world (and not in a good way).

A bomb fell on the camp.

A bomb in the form of one Steven G. Rogers in a dorky helmet and booty shorts. The girls were a hit, cheered and ogled by the men sitting on their asses in the hard-packed dirt of the parade ground, but when Rogers came on stage Darcy cringed as the soldiers went deathly silent. He did his best, but they were not having it.

“Bring out the girls!” a soldier shouted, hurling a fistful of mud at the stage, his sentiment and actions chorused until Captain America made his apologies and was replaced by three smiling chorus girls.

“So you got to see your show,” Stark commented with a grimace. “Happy now?”

“That was one of the most painful experiences of my life,” she admitted.

Howard nodded. “Imagine how bad it is for me. I helped make that.”

“Poor baby, your science experiment is being inappropriately treated,” she cooed and gave his head a pat. “Shall I schedule a meeting with Dr. Frankenstein so you can commiserate over a gin and tonic?”

He batted her condescending hand away and smoothed his hair. “Why haven’t I fired you yet?”

“Because you’d be lost without me. Seriously, you would last maybe a day.”

He straightened his tie, muttering. “I’d last longer than that.”

Darcy offered a saccharine smile that he had come to fear. “Really, who ordered the last batch of D42 engines?”

“It was… Patton,” he said, sounding in no way confident.

“Close, but you’re off by like a thousand miles. Brooke,” she informed him. “In England.”

“More like three thousand miles off,” he corrected, smiling at her as he stepped closer. “You know, you’re the only woman willing to put up with me.”

She returned the smile. “Very complimentary, Mr. Stark. Shall I note that on my quarterly review and put myself down for a raise?”

He replied with a silent laugh; she could feel the heat of his breath, smell the Scotch on it, and knew they were standing far too close for any normal conversation, though she couldn’t say when that had happened. She stepped away, clearing her throat and gesturing to the blueprints he had scattered across a table. “When –“

“Howard!” The urgent whisper came through the flap of the tent. Agent Carter darted in, the imposing figure of Captain America following. Darcy had barely a second to appreciate how he filled the tent before Carter started talking again. “Howard, those repairs to your aircraft, have you finished?”

“Yes,” the man said, offering a nod of greeting to the super soldier he helped build.

“Good, you’re going to fly us over Austria. We’re mounting a rescue operation. Tonight.”

Howard took a moment to swallow the last of his drink, turned to deposit the empty glass on the table, catching Darcy’s eye as he did; she offered him a small smile, which also happened to be the smuggest she had ever worn in her life. “That’s some heavily armed terrain,” he commented as he looked back at the pair. “You sure you can handle it?”

“Someone has to at least try,” Captain America said, sounding every bit the war hero of his films.

“Good enough for Stark,” Darcy declared. “I’ll have the H2 fueled and ready to go at 1800.”

“We really shouldn’t involve you, ma’am,” he insisted, turning his enormous blue eyes on her, and Darcy nearly squealed with glee.

“Don’t argue with her, Rogers,” Stark interjected before the humiliating noise escaped her. “You’ll lose. Every time.”

Darcy smiled. “I’ve taught him well.”

She pulled on a coat and marched from the tent to make the arrangements for the plane. The aviation personnel were not in the least bit happy with the prospect of having to prep the plane on a drizzly November evening, but, as Stark had said, no one argued with Maria Lewis. Not even Colonel Phillips, who came charging into Stark’s tent at 1930 after finding that Captain Rogers had missed his curtain call, that Stark’s plane had taken off on a course that would take him directly over enemy territory, and that Rogers, Stark and Carter were missing.

“Where is he?” the man demanded, his voice as gruff and clipped as she had ever heard it.

“Stark?” she clarified. “Last I heard he had a hankering for some fondue. Flew to Switzerland.”

He glared down at her. “At 1800? In the rain? And taking one of my agents and a chorus girl with him?”

“No, he didn’t take a chorus– oh, you mean Captain America.”

“Lewis, do not play games with me.” He pointed a warning finger at her but was gentlemanly enough not to actually poke her with it.

“Colonel, Stark isn’t under your command. He’s here out of a sense of patriotic duty and desire to kick some Nazi ass. Besides, you ordered him to leave a week ago, and now that he finally listened you’re getting pissy about it? Really?” She leveled him with a look over the rim of her glasses, one that never failed to make her brothers shamefaced and apologetic. “You really need to make up your mind.”

The man glared at her with enough venom to make a Five Star General wet himself, but Darcy held his gaze and waited. It took several long moments, but he finally backed down. “If he lives, you tell him his ass belongs to me.”

“You got it, chief.” Darcy saluted.

After he left and the night wore on, her brain started to catch up to her mouth. “Dude, I totally just browbeat a World War II colonel. I am so kickass!” Because there was no one around to see, she performed a small and well-earned victory dance.

“Is this what you do when I’m not around?”

Her arms fell and she spun around to find Stark watching her with an amused smile. Her face heated as it was consumed by a blush of embarrassment at having been caught. “You lived,” she said, trying not to sound as humiliated as she felt.

“I build sturdy planes,” Stark said with pride. “And Nazis have some of the worst aim I’ve ever seen.” He threw his jacket onto a chair, the shirt underneath soaked through with the evidence of just how nerve-wracking the flight had been.

She smiled and pretended not to notice. “Maybe I’ve just been knocking you down too many pegs; your head isn’t as big a target as it used to be.”

“Cute, Lewis,” he replied.

“How did it go?”

He paused to fix himself a drink. When he turned to face her, there was a wry smile on his face. “Do you really need to ask? I thought you knew everything.”

“No, I forget nothing,” she corrected. “And I can’t not forget what I never knew. I wasn’t a history major. I didn’t study the details of every battle in World War II.”

“A fair point,” he conceded, falling into the chair behind his desk with a groan. “Rogers dropped down into Austria and is, I’m assuming, still alive. Carter wouldn’t let me fly to Lucerne, said we had to stay within transponder range.” He sighed and took a pull of his drink. “How long do we have to wait?”

Darcy checked her watch. It was nearly midnight, and would soon be the 4th of November, the day Captain America marched 400 prisoners of war back across the border to freedom. “Not long.”

She left him nursing his drink and returned to her side of the tent, laying herself down on the cot and staring up at the pitched roof of waterproof wool. Sleep evaded her; her brain was too full of questions. Hours ticked by, but she still lay there thinking. Where was Rogers now? Had he reached the HYDRA base yet? Had he found Barnes and the rest of the captured men? Were they already marching across the border into Italy? Were they coming into the camp at that very moment?

Spurred on by the thought, she leapt to her feet and hurried through the tent to peer out the flap.

Nothing.

“Damn.”

“Lewis, will you go to sleep already.” For the second time that night, she spun around to face an unexpected Howard Stark. She opened her mouth to say something condescending, but stopped when she bothered to look at him. He was pale from the long hours spent in the underground bunker in England, but, more than that, he looked exhausted. She made sure he got to bed every day, but she couldn’t force him to sleep. As good a showman as he was, he easily hid the exhaustion when the colonel or his men were looking, but she had caught him by surprise; he was either too shocked or too tired to bother hiding it.

“Whatcha working on?”

“Your Project Pop Tart,” he sighed and rubbed his eyes. “This is the only time I have to work on it when no one will see it.” He offered up the file he had filled with notes, copies of articles from scientific journals and a few letters addressed to Mr. B. Tillman.

“Tillman?” she read.

“I had to write under a false name. If they knew it was me asking, Uncle Sam might get wind of it and think I’m developing a new weapon,” he explained. “They’d send people around and start asking questions I can’t answer.”

Darcy looked through the letters, dated as far back as May. “How long have you been working on this?”

“Since you turned up on my doorstep with that telephone of yours.”

“Stark, that’s almost five months.”

“I know,” he groaned. “I should have figured something out by now. But—”

“No,” she cut him off, unable to stop herself smiling as she held the work out to him. “I mean that’s five months you have been working on Project Pop Tart without telling me. I thought you didn’t give a crap.”

“Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?”

He took hold of the papers, but Darcy could not force herself to let go. She stood in amazement of the man she had spent hours cursing internally for being such a self-serving jackass, an unfeeling asshat, a childish dickwad, among other things. Many of those insults were true, but, underneath it all, there might be hope for him yet.

Her fingers finally loosened and the spell broke. She stepped back and gave him a critical look. “You look like hell, Stark. Make sure you get some sleep. When Captain America gets back sometime today, things are going to get very interesting, very fast.”

“I’m going to hold you to that promise,” he said and started spreading the papers out across his desk, rearranging them until they made some form of sense, at least to him.

“Good night, Mr. Stark.”

“Good night, Miss Lewis.”

She returned to her side of the tent, laying herself down on the cot and staring up at the pitched roof of waterproof wool. Once again, sleep evaded her; her brain was too full of questions. The most dominant one being: _What the fuck was that?_

Seriously, what the fuck was that?

She had known Stark for five months. In that time, he had been a steady, solid constant, living up to her initial impression of being a brilliant asshole. Every word out of his mouth and action he had taken had only cemented his character in her mind. With one late-night encounter, he managed to take her notions – so firmly rooted in observation that Jane would have cried tears of sciencey joy – and blow them to smithereens. Eight days ago, she had asked him to work on her problem, told him to take just five minutes to think about it; he could have said something, told her he was working on it when he had time, but he had said nothing. Instead, he silently suffered her censure while losing sleep to help her without ever telling her. God, that was the stuff of loveable heroes. Like when he protected her from the explosion.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” she swore under her breath and flattened the pillow down over her face, burying her scream in it.

How dare he turn out to have such a loveable and heroic streak hidden behind his grabby hands?

What an asshole!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The initial panic of finding a new place as ebbed into minor urgency and general annoyance. Updates will likely still be sporadic, as the paperwork of teaching has started to kick my ass and the next chapter or two have some major wrinkles I need to iron out... nothing I can pinpoint, just an overall not-right-ness that needs to be addressed.


	13. WTF

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a hero returns and a a questions is repeated.

The sharp cry of the bugle startled Darcy awake. Months of it blowing through the speakers of the London bunker every morning at 0630 had not dulled the shock of first call or reveille. She missed the soothing duck quack of her phone’s alarm and the accompanying smell of coffee from her fancy programmable coffeemaker back home or, better still, the depositing of a small personal pot of coffee on her bedside table by the preternaturally silent butler at Stark’s mansion. Lewises were not cut out for military scheduling.

She groaned and rolled from the cot, landing on her feet and swaying there for a moment before chasing the smell of coffee out into the common area where she and Stark worked. He was there already, or possibly still there from the previous night, looking as awake and alert as he did every morning. It irritated the hell out of her.

“Good morning,” he said, holding out a cup of coffee for her.

She took it with a grunt of thanks.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look unnaturally lovely in the mornings?” Stark smiled as he eyed her knotty hair and the pillow creases on her splotchy face. Darcy Lewis did not do early mornings.

“Fuck off,” Darcy mumbled.

“And such a sweet disposition. I really don’t understand how some lucky man hasn’t snatched you up.”

“I wish I had my Taser. I’d like you a lot better if you were twitching in a puddle of your own drool,” she informed him baldly.

Stark was more or less used to her anti-social morning routine, but today her mood was even more biting than normal. Thanks to him, she had gotten approximately nine minutes of sleep the previous night. Every time she rolled over, she had seen the light from his desk lamp shining through the gap in her privacy flap as he worked through the night writing up calculations for Project Pop Tart. The asshole.

He smiled as if knowing the slurs she was mentally sending his way. “Well, I’m sure you’ll buck up when you remember it’s your big day.”

She grunted into her coffee, turned her back on him and shuffled to the relative privacy of her section of the tent.

No, even the promise of Captain America’s return couldn’t bring a smile to her face, though it had been one of the few things she had been eager to see in this decade. The joy of witnessing that loveable hero and his sexy sidekick had been derailed by the discovery of Stark’s hidden nobility. That unfortunate ‘eureka’ moment left her moody and seriously wanting to punch something. Agent Carter probably had a gun. Maybe she would let Darcy borrow it for target practice. She could tape a picture of Stark’s head to a can or onto one of those straw dummies soldiers always used to practice stabbing. Anything to keep the aggression coursing through her; because, if she was angry with him, she couldn’t admit that knowing he was sitting awake at night working secretly on Project Pop Tart just for her made her knees a bit weak.

 _Stop that!_ she scolded herself and pushed the hairbrush through her rat’s nest with far more violence than was healthy.

“Lewis,” Stark called. “Phillips sent over a welcoming committee. If I’m court marshalled, do not drink all my liquor.”

She stuck her head through the privacy flap in time to see a pair of MPs marching him from the tent and offered a shrug in response, too exhausted to much care.

It wasn’t as if Phillips could really do anything to punish him. Stark wasn’t in the military, so he couldn’t actually be court marshalled. Someone higher up in the ranks decided which weapons manufacturer got the contracts, so he couldn’t pull that plug. Plus, she had heard the colonel say just how essential Stark was to the SSR.

No, sadly, he would be back, as annoying and secretly selfless as he always was.

She sighed, and thought about what Jarvis had said to her that morning some weeks ago after the disappointing, though not entirely surprising, realization that Stark had no idea what her name was. He had told her to expect more of their employer, had said he might rise to meet her standard if she set it high enough. Though flattered by the assertion that she had some sway over their boss, she had pretty much scoffed at the idea. At the time, she had thought it impossible that Stark could be anything but the thoughtless jackass she had seen day in, day out. Knowing that he was working late into the night just for her, Darcy couldn’t help but wonder if she had unknowingly raised the bar, if she had sent some signal that made him want to be better than everyone thought he was.

She scoffed again now. Anything would be an improvement on what people thought of him.

Really, he wasn’t so bad…

“Just stop that. Stop thinking about him,” she commanded herself.

She focused intently on getting dressed and applying her makeup, putting every ounce of her attention into fastening buttons and controlling the mascara brush and tube of lipstick. It was just as she finished rolling her lips together that she heard the first strangled shouts from the other side of her tent wall. More shouting and the sound of boots slogging through puddles followed, and Darcy shot to her feet.

She knew precisely what the commotion was.

“Captain America!” she cried and ran from the tent.

In their excitement to reach the edge of camp, several men nearly bowled her over, but she soldiered on. This was it. The very moment she had been waiting for. She would not miss the triumphant return of Captain America. Unfortunately, their tent was at the heart of the camp near Colonel Phillips’ office, which meant she was too far away to see anything more than an ocean of olive drab.

Not caring that she was in a skirt or that the action was probably considered unseemly, she climbed up the running board of a nearby Jeep, gripping the metal frame of the windshield to pull herself over the fender and onto the hood. From her perch, she could see over the men to the line of freed prisoners and commandeered tanks trailing through the forest, past the vanishing point at the horizon; at the lead, Captain America.

All aggravation forgotten, Darcy smiled.

Accounts of this event were documented in newsreels and history books. She had read about it from the perspective of close to thirty eyewitnesses, including Agent Carter, yet not a single man or woman present thought to pull out a camera to capture the moment. She had imagined what it looked like, seen recreations in documentaries and a biopic starring Robert Redford as Steve Rogers, but the real thing was spectacular. Redford, while good, had not managed to recreate that delicate balance between confidence and humility that Steve Rogers carried in his every move. His costar had completely missed the mark on Sergeant Barnes, failing to emote anything more complex than smirk and swagger. While ‘I’m So Sexy’ Barnes had each in spades, there was so much more going on there.

The shout rang out: “Let’s hear it for Captain America!”

“Okay, Lewis, I have to admit, that is impressive,” Stark said from his spot leaning on the fender.

Under normal circumstances, Darcy would have responded like an adult, snarked or sassed and generally been magnanimous in accepting his concession. However, she was running on nine minutes of fitful sleep, and something had shifted in her opinion of him, which had somewhat altered their dynamic. Rather than anything remotely smooth, her response was about as graceful and dignified as a platypus. She squeaked and spun to face him, and, in the process, lost her footing and fell headfirst off the hood of the Jeep.

Luckily, or unluckily depending on one’s viewpoint, Stark was there to catch her.

“Damn, Lewis, what’s gotten into you?” he demanded.

 _You!_ she wanted to scream. Instead, she just leaned into him as she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal and for some oxygen to make it back into her lungs, but the longer his hands pressed into her back and hip the less likely it seemed that either of those things would actually happen. Then she looked at him, and it got worse. His pupils were enormous despite the early morning light that ought to have them constricted down to pinpoints, making his eyes dark even as they were full of concern, and, _damn_ , if that didn’t hit all the right loveable hero buttons inside her.

“Maybe, we ought to keep your feet on the ground when you’re swooning over your favorite movie star,” he suggested with a forced laugh, sliding his hands to her waist.

“Totes,” she agreed. She hoped he didn’t notice how strained her voiced sounded or the goosebumps that rose on her skin when he moved his hands across her body.

“We, uh, we should go. Colonel Phillips will want to coordinate.” He stepped away, pausing only long enough to make sure she could stand on her own two feet.

“I’ll be right there,” she waved his concern away. “You get a head start showing those Nazis whose boss. I’m cool.”

His face told her he thought she was anything but. Still, he left. Darcy leaned on the Jeep – clung to it, more like – oblivious to the men filing past her as they returned to their duties or helped the newly arrived men to medical. If she had been paying attention, she would have seen Captain America and his BFF Sergeant ‘I’m So Sexy’ Barnes move past her to join Stark in Colonel Phillips’ tent; she might have remembered that Stark outfitted Captain America and his Howling Commandos with their specialized gear; she might have realized that she would be spending a bit of time in their company. She did none of those things because all she could do was breathe and hold on to the fender of that dull olive Jeep for dear life while a single question ran through her head, the same question that had kept her awake all night: _What the fuck was that?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying not to post any chapters until I re-established my buffer. I like to have at least three chapters between what you see online and what I'm working on... but I hate leaving it without updates for too long, and I haven't touched this story in close to two months. I got distracted by others and by work. Sorry. 
> 
> Give me a prodding. Maybe it will get me motivated to write this again.


	14. Welcome Distractions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which issues are not confronted and options are made available.

It took far too long to convince her legs they were capable of taking her weight. Despite the odd looks that she was getting from the men filing past, she continued to lean against the Jeep. Anything was a better option that entering the Colonel’s small office, facing the questioning glances of Stark, having to stand too near him in the tight quarters afforded by the tent. He would look at her with those dark, concerned eyes, and she couldn't have that.

As she stood, fighting the conflicting thoughts in her head and the still-rapid beat of her heart, an officer ran from the Colonel’s tent.

“Jimmy!” she called, making the man skid in the mud. “What's up?”

“New orders. We're getting out of this shithole,” the man replied, too excited to bother filtering his language in front of a lady, not that he ever bothered with that around Darcy.

“I'll go pack,” she said with far too much enthusiasm. She hated packing, but it was an absolutely fabulous alternative to standing awkwardly by Stark’s side. Her legs agreed and held her weight as she hurried to Stark’s tent and started packing up the man’s affects. She had finished and moved on to packing up his papers when his voice startled her in the silence.

“Word travels fast.”

“Good news does,” she replied tightly, refusing to turn and face him.

“Lewis, I—“

“I've already packed up your clothes and liquor. I'd like to get my things finished if we're flying out today. You got this?” She gestured vaguely to the remaining blueprints and files remaining.

He sighed, and she tried not to read it as dejection. “Yeah, Lewis. I have it.”

One trans-channel flight and three days later, Darcy was making an occupation of pretending the events of November 4th never happened, save the return of Captain America and all that jazz. If Stark mentioned that day, she developed spontaneous deafness in both ears or an all-consuming interest in the work being done in another section of the bunker. Being a smart man, he learned after the first morning back in England not to mention it, so whatever he had to say about their strange encounter at the Jeep was kept firmly to himself for the betterment of all.

Just because neither one acknowledged it, didn’t mean things hadn’t changed. Darcy could not stop herself from being aware of Stark whenever they were alone, and no matter how often she told herself it was her imagination, she knew that he was watching her.

The added workload of outfitting Captain Rogers and his men was a welcome distraction, one that kept Stark from staring at her and her from thinking overly hard about him.

“Lewis,” Stark called.

“Hm?” Darcy looked up from the file on her desk to see Stark elbows-deep in his latest shield modification.

“Allen wrench,” he demanded.

“On the table,” she informed him.

“I know. My hands are full. Come on!”

She sighed and considered throwing it at his head but decided that would be childish. She grabbed the tool and slid it into place where he was working, pointedly ignoring the fact that their bodies were pressed together as her fingers fumbled to turn the wrench in the tight space.

“Don’t you have grunts and technicians for this sort of thing?”

“They’re all busy. You’re all I’ve got,” he said, his breath warm on her neck. “Besides, I don’t think any of them could fit their hands in there.”

“Good to know I don’t have man-hands,” she quipped. “Got it.”

“You sure?” he questioned, his breath warming her neck and causing goose bumps to rise on her skin. He leaned into her, every inch of his frame fitting into her curves as his hand slid against hers to claim the wrench. Darcy tried to breathe normally, but her lungs refused to work.

Stark finally stepped back, turning the shield over and admiring the work and apparently oblivious to the affect he was having on her. “Not bad. I think this might be my favorite.”

Darcy nodded to buy time to catch her breath. “Lots of fancies.”

“Rogers is coming in tomorrow to choose his equipment,” he informed her, wiping his hands on a towel. “You might want to make sure he knows. Eight o’clock.”

She nodded and left the lab, forcing her feet to keep a normal, I’m-so-totally-not-eager-to-get-away-from-you pace. As soon as she was free of his stare, however, she all but ran through the bunker, slamming into someone as she rounded a corner too fast.

“Balls, I’m sorry,” she groaned and rolled up to sitting. “Agent Carter! Please, don’t shoot me.”

The woman laughed. “It’s fine. I’d be anxious to escape Howard’s company, too, if I had to spend all day with him.”

Darcy hoped she wasn’t blushing. “Actually, I’m on an errand. I’m supposed to find Captain Am—Rogers. Captain Rogers.”

“I believe he’s left to recruit his team,” the woman said slowly as if verifying the facts even as she spoke them. “There was talk of the Rose and Crown.”

“That’s a bar, right?”

“A pub, actually,” she corrected. “Just down the street from Whitehall.”

“Right,” Darcy said uncertainly. When she and the techs went for drinks, it was always to the Scot’s Pony, a bar – _pub_ – just across the street from the entrance to the bunker. It was as far from the safety of the underground installation as she had dared to venture.

She knew London, had lived there for close to a year while working with Jane; most of the places she had frequented in that time had been founded well before the war, but, despite knowing those shops and pubs were out in the wider city, she was still reluctant to stray far from the bunker. This London was somehow entirely different than the one she had known. New York of 1943 had not terrified her like this London did; mainly because New York wasn’t under constant threat of being bombed to hell by Nazis.

The fear of travelling so far must have shown on her face because Peggy had a hand on her arm. She smiled as she offered, “I can tell him, if you like. If it isn’t classified.”

“No, it’s just about the weapons selection tomorrow at eight,” Darcy said. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to get out.” She smiled a kindly and sympathetic smile as she added, “You really ought to get out, as well. It’s not healthy spending all your time with Howard. You might develop a distorted view of men.”

Darcy considered her advice, wondering if that was the problem. Sure, Stark had surprised her by being secretly selfless, but he was still a jackass and a man-whore. While she might not be in possession of the greatest track record with men, she was still able to avoid the total jerks and was smart enough not to fall for a known womanizer. That had to be the reason for the growing awkwardness; it was equal parts clinging to a known factor in a strange land and a complete lack of options, for he was the only unattached man she spent any time with who she could speak freely and be herself.

 _Well, no wonder I was starting to get warm fuzzies for him!_ she realized.

She looked to Peggy and repeated the brief directions. “Rose and Crown. Whitehall.”

“I can walk with you if you need a friend.”

“Okay,” she agreed, probably a bit too quickly. “I should probably clean up. I’ve been working in the lab all day.”

“Yes, you’ve a bit of a Hitler moustache,” the woman said, gesturing to her face.

Darcy swiped a hand across her lip. Her fingers came away with a smear of grease. “Asshat could have said something,” Darcy muttered under her breath.

Peggy pretended not to hear her. “I’ll tell you what,” she said slowly. “I have to finish a field report for Colonel Phillips. I will meet you at the stairs in half an hour. I’m sure the Captain and his men will still be drinking by then.”

Nodding her agreement without pause, Darcy hurried to her quarters, a tiny closet of a room that barely managed to contain the two metal-framed beds and two trunks to hold the occupants’ effects. Darcy’s roommate, Margo, was a boney blonde woman from Kansas, who had grown shakier with each passing day; she expected to have the room all to herself after another air raid or two.  

She managed a sponge-bath in the communal ladies bathroom to remove the grease and grit of Stark’s lab, then totally stole Margo’s perfume because the soap she had available was atrocious. With some makeup, she looked pretty okay, hardly the knockout she usually was when she went clubbing with the girls, but it would have to do. Thanks to Jarvis’ skills, her Hildy-approved blue dress was as pristine as it was the day it went into her trunk; she smoothed the dress down one last time before heading out to meet Peggy.

A hand closed around her arm before she made it five feet from her room. “There you are. I have been looking everywhere,” Stark groused. “The last shield modification isn’t right, the sight is off and the gun keeps firing to the left. I need y—what are you wearing?”

“A dress,” she said, though it hardly needed stating.

He blinked his confusion. “Why?”

“I’m going out.”

“But we’re working.”

“No, you are wasting time on things that don’t need doing. I already told you, Rogers won’t pick one of your bells-and-whistles shields. Simple. Round. That’s what he’ll want.” She pulled her arm free. “I need to go. Someone is waiting for me.”

“Who?”

Somehow he managed to sound wounded, defensive and possessive within that single syllable. It was enough to stop her in her tracks, to have her turning to face him with every ounce of righteous indignation a single human was capable of containing. “Last I checked, my employment contract did not read that you are allowed to dictate the company I keep, Stark.”

“I didn’t—“

“You did. And you will never do it again. Are we clear?” She was being uncharacteristically hard, she knew, but that possessiveness in his voice had felt like a slap to the face. Despite all the evidence she had accumulated to the contrary, she was not Stark’s wife. He had no right to speak to her like that. Not ever, if she had any say.

“I just—“

“Are. We. Clear?”

He looked away, his face contorting as if he had a foul taste in his mouth, but he agreed. “We’re clear.”

“Good. Now let’s hope Peggy hasn’t left without me.”

“Oh, it’s Carter?” he said, relief taking over his face. “Why didn’t you just say?”

“Because, asshat, it’s not your business.” She might have intentionally clipped him with her purse as she walked past him, but she would totally deny it if someone called her on it.

Peggy was not by the stairs.

Darcy checked her watch. Her little encounter with Stark had made her nearly fifteen minutes late. Would the woman have left without her? She hurried up the stairs and through the lobby of the building that guarded the entrance to the bunker. There were a few guards, but no sign of Carter. She walked on, peering through the door cautiously, terrified the air raid sirens would begin their deafening whine the moment she set foot outside.

Slowly, much more slowly than was strictly necessary, she set her foot on the sidewalk. Her high heel clicked, but that was the only sound that met her ears.

“One small step for Darcy,” she muttered and stepped the rest of the way onto the pavement.

Again, no sirens.

There was, however, a bombshell.

This bombshell came in the size and hourglass shape of Agent Peggy Carter in a little red dress, walking purposefully down the sidewalk toward Whitehall.

Darcy didn’t want to shout. Despite their bunker being housed beneath a ministry building, she got the impression they were not supposed to draw undue attention to the place, so she kept her mouth shut and hurried to follow Carter. The woman was in the pub before Darcy could catch up, but it was obvious which way she had gone by the stunned silence that followed her. She was more than a little envious. The stunned silence that usually met Darcy was born out of confusion and not any sort of admiration.

“0800, Captain,” she heard Peggy say before turning and walking toward Darcy. “You’re late,” she chided when she saw her.

“Sorry, Stark happens,” she apologized. “Did you want to get a drink?”

“Actually, I think I’m going to head back to base,” she said, glancing over her shoulder where Captain America was still staring at her with a gaping mouth and enormous eyes.

“Yeah, sure,” Darcy replied absently as she looked from Carter to the Captain. She moved closer, totally eavesdropping and not being in the least bit ashamed of it.

“I’m turning into you,” a dark haired man said, hands flying out and dropping ineffectually to his sides. “This is a nightmare.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Captain Rogers said, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder as he steered him back to the bar. “Besides, she’s got a friend.” He looked up and met Darcy’s eye, those blue eyes that had been huge with consideration and worry last time they looked her way were now alive with a merriment that bordered on mischief. A smirked pulled at the corner of his mouth, and she knew he was trying not to laugh.

She put on her best supermodel strut and walked over to meet him. “Did Agent Carter talk to you?” she asked.

His posture shifted to slight unease. “Uh, yes, ma’am. 0800. Stark. Weapons.”

Darcy nodded, her face pulling into a frown as she did. “She got all dressed up just to tell you that?”

“Ah… well, I, uh… yeah.”

“Makeup and all,” she observed.

He offered a string of unintelligible sounds that might have been a ‘yes’.

“And she didn’t stay for a drink,” Darcy noted.

Again, more awkward noises.

“Or a dance.”

The nervous gibberish that started to escape his mouth was brought to a stop when his friend snorted into his glass. The trademarked Captain Glare was sent his way, but Sergeant ‘I’m So Sexy’ Barnes just laughed before turning his own blue eyes on her. “Stop torturing him and just say it.”

“She is totally into you,” Darcy said, speaking each syllable slowly and precisely.

“No, she...she just… dames like to – _women_ – women like to get all… that wasn’t for me…”

“Is he not the cutest thing when he stutters?” the man grinned and threw an arm around Captain America’s shoulders.

“Shut up, Bucky,” Rogers groaned and threw that arm off, stealing his glass off the bar and stalking from the room.

“I thought when they turned him into that, the dumb kid I knew would be gone,” Bucky admitted. “Glad I was wrong.”

“Too much fun to sass?”

“Hell, yes.”  He offered her a grin, one that on someone else might have come across as leering; on him it just looked damn good. “Do you drink?”

“Hell, yes,” she echoed, happily leveling him with a so-not-leering look of her own.  This was a bad idea, and she knew it. But after half a year with Stark as her only male company, ‘I’m So Sexy’ Barnes was looking like one incredibly welcome distraction. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit that I haven't written anything new to this story in quite some time. I'm hoping that being away for so long will mean being able to see the issues bogging down chapter 15, which has been the cause of the delays. ::cross your fingers::


	15. Lost in Austen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which signals are sent and then promptly ignored.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies in advance for any slips into UK spelling. My Word program is automatically set to UK English (I used to write a lot of Harry Potter stories), and I haven't bothered to change the settings.

“Dammit, Stark, where did you put the Frisbee of Freedom?”

Darcy tore through the stack of discarded prototypes, hunting for the unfinished vibranium shield that she knew Captain Rogers would carry through the war and through time. It was nowhere. She wondered if Stark had intentionally hidden the thing. Darcy scowled at the man. She had told him time and again what Rogers would want, but he refused to believe that anyone would prefer a simple, low-tech disc to one of his state-of-the-art walking armories. Never mind the fact that the things were enormous, unwieldy and downright fugly in some cases.

She was running out of time. It was nearly 0800. Rogers would be there soon, and if she couldn’t find his iconic shield he would have no alternative to Stark’s monstrosities.

“Success!” she cried and yanked the disc free.

She studied the shield, tracing the circles with her eyes. It was elegant in its simplicity. Rogers would love it.

Before Stark could object, she stowed it under the lab bench currently being used as a display table, leaving enough of the disc protruding that someone hunting for another option would easily see it. Operation Alternative accomplished, she set about tidying the mess she had made.

“All right, I think we’re all set,” Stark said, finally taking notice of the room around him. He frowned at her. “Why are you playing in the scrap heap?”

“We all have our hobbies,” she shrugged and strolled around a pillar to watch with smug satisfaction as Rogers arrived and Stark moved through all the things he seemed to think the man would need. None of the techs paid her any attention as she hovered, pretending to work.

“Maria,” Carter greeted as she walked past.

“Peggy,” she grinned, watching the woman saunter over to the two men. Darcy might not be in possession  of a scientist’s observational skills, but she knew attitude when she saw it, knew a woman scorned when she saw one.

 _Holy shit_ , Darcy thought and saw the same written all over Howard’s face as Carter picked a gun and sent four bullets careening towards the first avenger. She was suddenly very glad Peggy had decided that Darcy was a friend; she was certainly not a woman anyone would want as an enemy.

She grabbed a file and hurried from the lab before Stark decided to drag her into the tense conversation that followed Peggy’s departure. It wasn’t running away. Not really. Rogers wasn’t the only one who needed outfitting. They had to finish the prototypes for the other Howling Commandos before the end of the week, which left Darcy with far too much paperwork to keep track of.

The office off the lab was blessedly empty. All the techs and grunts were down with Stark, awaiting orders on how to modify whatever armor and weapons the good Captain selected. Since shipping off to England, Darcy had been given precious little time all to herself. When she wasn’t with Howard, she was with the techs or with Phillips and Margery arranging for materials, and, while Margo spent most of her time in their shared room under her blanket having panic attacks, she still counted as a person Darcy had to hold her tongue around. She missed being able to just be herself. Playing the role of Maria became taxing after a while.

Back home, when things got overwhelming, Darcy had a system to deal with it, unhealthy as it might have been. She would go to a dive bar, dance for hours to the Wurlitzer, get shitfaced and make out with the hottest guy she could manage.

Sadly, she had yet to discover such a thing as a dive bar in the ‘40s. Getting plastered was not an option; experience had taught her that she could keep no secrets after three shots of tequila or five martinis, whichever came first. In the absence of attractive men who didn’t make her want to slap their mustached faces, she had to settle for Door Number 3: Dance Party.

She turned to the tabletop radio, its art deco lines still gorgeous despite the scratches and scuffs it had suffered being transported across oceans and channels. She turned the knobs as Howard had shown her, releasing the locks, and pulled the face loose. Her phone sat inside on a custom bracket, wires connecting it to the speakers and to the braided cord that once powered the old radio. It was a masterful disguise that let her keep her prized possession nearby without worrying it would fall into the wrong hands. No one would give a second look to such an old thing; it wasn’t even Stark tech.

Her finger woke the phone and slid across the screen, easily finding a playlist that would allow her to dance herself silly without arousing too much concern should anyone walk in. No easy feat when the world had yet to discover ninety percent of the music Darcy preferred.

She closed the radio, turning the knobs to lock the face back into place.

“Do you dance? No? Well, why don’t I teach you sometime?” she said to the room, her voice low as she repeated Barnes’s words from the previous night. She dropped her head and peered up through her lashes, smoldering as he had done. That man had a great smolder.

As the song picked up pace and filled the room with sound, she danced along. She had never taken a single lesson, not even the seemingly ubiquitous ballet lessons nearly every little girl attended. No, her dance followed no prescribed rules and was unique to her. It involved no small amount of booty shaking and random twirls with a pinch of the robot just because it would never go out of style.

“I can see why you wanted to wait.”

Darcy’s attempt to freeze mid-twirl did not go to plan. One foot stopped while the other kept spinning, resulting in the woman knocking herself off her own feet and only managing to keep from crashing to the floor by grabbing onto the nearest desk.

“I should have knocked,” the man said, his words and tone apologetic, while his eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Barnes,” she groaned and hoisted herself to her feet. “What are you doing here? Stark’s in the lab.”

“I know. Steve said they were meeting this morning.”

She studied him a moment, confused. “So if you know he isn’t here, why did you come?”

“For you,” he said simply.

“What did I do?”

He smiled. “Nothing.”

“Well, good. Because I would totally deny it anyway,” she insisted.

They both stood in silence for what felt like far too long to be socially acceptable. “So, why are you here?” she asked again.

“I realized that I never actually got your name last night.”

Later, she would think back and try to understand what made her do it. She would chalk it up to a moment of weakness or feeling too much like her old self listening to her music because, when she opened her mouth, the lie didn’t come out. Her proper name did. “Darcy.”

 She had spent nearly half a year carefully protecting that truth, keeping her real name hidden away. It was too late to correct herself. He had already heard it, already repeated it. Once she heard him say her name, her _real_ name, she knew she wouldn’t take it back even if it were possible.

“Darcy,” he said slowly. “Like from Jane Austen?”

“Yeah,” she admitted, quickly formulating a lie. “Just a silly nickname my mom used. She really liked Austen. But how do you even know that?”

He shrugged. “I have a sister.”

“Two brothers,” she replied, uncertain if she was supposed to elaborate or ask him for details about his family. The man flustered her; Darcy was no slouch in the dating department. She had hooked up with her fair share of guys, but none quite so attractive as Barnes. That a man like him would go out of his way to find her, to talk to her, was bordering on the surreal.

“Do I have to worry about them breaking my legs?” he questioned as he stepped closer, most definitely breeching her personal space. The smirk pulling at his mouth spoke to all the reasons Ben and Bing might cause him bodily harm.

Darcy leaned closer to whisper her answer. “No need. They’ve already taught me all they know.”

“I’ll have to tread carefully, then.” His mouth pulled into a suggestive grin that played perfectly with his boyish face, then all at once the smile fell and he was taking a step away from her. Darcy searched his face for a reason why his manner had changed so abruptly.

The reason cleared his throat. "Barnes, your appointment isn't until tomorrow afternoon."

Barnes apparently had no intention of berating him for the interruption. His response was one of those looks men give one another, a strange secret code of eyebrow wiggles, lip twitches and nostril flairs, that somehow manages to communicate novels inside a single glance. Whatever message he was sending, Stark returned an answer that had him stepping back to an even more respectful distance, leaving room for not only Jesus but also Moses and one of the slimmer Buddhas.

“I should go see what Steve’s decided. That punk’s got as much sense as a post,” Bucky offered with a smile nothing like the flirtation of moments ago.

“I’ll see you out,” Darcy said, leading the way to the door.

Once in the corridor, it seemed as if Bucky would walk away without saying a word. He was halfway down the hall before he turned and ran back to find her still holding the open door. His face contorted as he fought to find his words. He could even make conflicted look good.

Finally, he spoke, “I’m sorry. I shoulda known. I’m not, you know, good enough.”

“Good enough?” she questioned, not quite understanding what he was getting at.

“For Stark’s girl,” he clarified.

Stark’s girl? Was that the secret man signal Howard had sent to him, that Darcy was his and to back off? Her hands curled into fists, aching to lash out and punch the man in his stupid, presumptuous face. She had been fighting that unbelievable truth since she first held her forged identification papers in June. The evidence was overwhelmingly against her, but that didn’t mean that she had to just give up and accept it. Stark was still an asshat.

When she managed to find her voice, it was so hard the man flinched. “Two things. One: I am _not_ Stark’s girl,” she barrelled over his attempted protest. “And two: _I_ decide who is good enough. Not Stark. Not you. _Me_. Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnes replied, something of his old confident smirk back in place.

“So, you seem like you have potential to be good enough,” she informed him, with a frank perusal of his face and body. “You have permission to ask me for a drink.”

He laughed. “I thought I already did last night.”

“I was thinking of a drink more as a euphemism – you know, when you say one thing but mean another. Here ‘drink’ most likely means you pull every bit of my lipstick off with your mouth.”

His smile fell into a shocked O. “Where are you from?”

“Bridgeport,” she smiled, no hint of the bitter bile coming as she lied flawlessly.

“Well, damn, if I’d known the women there were like you, I would have been saving my nickels for the Metro-North!”

She stepped back, releasing the door and smiling. “Good thing you didn’t waste your money, then. I’m one of a kind, Barnes,” she said as the door closed on his eager grin.

Her own smile fell as she turned and faced Howard.

“Lew—“

“No,” she cut him off. “You do not get to speak to me. Go science and shut the hell up.” She busied herself with her work, collecting the notes the techs had written on the glowing blue bullets Rogers had brought back from Austria with every intention of taking them to Margery to be typed. Stark blocked her path, too stupid to know when to leave an irate woman alone.

“Lewis,” he persisted, “ you cannot step out with him.”

“And why not?”

His mouth and hands flapped uselessly for a moment before he all but shouted, “Bec… Because!”

“That’s not a reason. I need a real, sciencey answer with actual evidence to back it up,” she crossed her arms and waited.

“He… Barnes,” he sneered the name, “is from here. From now. You cannot step out with someone from _now_.”

She frowned at him, considering the argument. If he were trying to keep her single so he could turn her into the mother of his child, that would not be an appropriate rebuttal as it could easily be used against him. Carter was right; she had been around him too long if she thought his sole purpose in keeping her around was to turn her into the mother of Iron Man. She definitely needed to get out more.

“Lame reason. He may be an official 1940s person, but, thanks to you, so am I. Got the birth certificate to prove it and everything.”

She waited, but Stark just stood before her helplessly.

“Well, if that’s all you got, then I’m going to get back to work and so should you,” she said, shoving him toward his drafting table.

Files in hand, she was halfway to the door before a thought occurred to her, “Oh, and if you make Barnes wimpy armor and get him killed, I’m so never speaking to you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While watching the shield selection scene, I noticed a woman with long, dark hair skulking in the background and squealed with delight. This movie makes it so easy to squeeze Darcy in. I love it!
> 
> In other news, I'm taking a trip to the wildlife/education center where I will be teaching two weeks of summer camp next month. If the heat don't kill me, the bugs definitely will. Sounds like fun!


	16. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a relationship is had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge and completely insufficient apologies for the delay in updating. I was determined to finish my only remaining unfinished HP story before moving out of that universe to complete this one (well, publicly unfinished one; I have at least three stagnating on my thumb drive which I'd like to get around to eventually). 
> 
> Anyway! Currently 600 words in to chapter 20 of this story, so I felt confident that nothing in this chapter would need altering. I'll try to post with some frequency again, though it will depend heavily on my ability to make time to write.... with Winter break coming in just over 3 weeks... I think we're good on that front. :)

Darcy fell.

She fell fast, and she fell hard.

She didn’t want to, didn’t mean to. Barnes was only supposed to be a distraction, something to take her mind off Howard, work and the general anxiety of lying her way through a life seventy years removed from her right time. He was something pretty to play with, the metaphorical shiny object. But he turned out to be so much more.

Maybe it was the urgency of life during wartime. Maybe it was knowing he had only another year before falling in battle. Maybe it was a kneejerk reaction, a stubborn determination to fall for someone – _anyone_ – that wasn’t Howard Stark.

She didn’t really care what the logic was behind it. The result was the same regardless of the reason.

It started with a smile. Not the smirk that would have passed for a leer on anybody else. This was a beatific smile, one of delight that she actually deigned to meet him for a date, their first date. He had a paper flower in his hands when he met her at the door of the Rose and Crown. Darcy certainly wasn’t a pushover, but that smile won her over instantly. It made her feel like the only woman in England and like she wasn’t wearing the same dress she had worn the night before; it was her only dress suitable for socializing according to 1940s rules as dictated by Hildy Bloomquist.

He must have read the anxious slide of her hands against the fabric because the first words out of that smile were designed to quell her self-consciousness. “I love you in that dress.”

She waited a beat, anticipating the sleazy addition that inevitably followed such a line, but he turned and opened the door. “Ladies first.”

That night, he taught her to dance.  Despite her weak protests and memories of the last time she had attempted a proper formal dance with a partner – Mickey Cortez with his sweaty hand gripping hers so tightly her fingers went numb halfway through the dance and his polished dress shoes stomping hard enough to fracture two of her toes all while pulling her so close there was no room for her to breathe let alone any room for Jesus – Barnes managed to get her into the crowd of couples.  

“You’re not scared of a little dance, are you?” His smile turned into a challenging smirk, practically triple-dog-daring her to dance with him. He paused just long enough for spite to unfurl in her along with something rather warm and tingly before he held his hand out for her to take.

Eyes narrowed as if sizing him up, she stepped closer and slapped her hand down into his.

“Thought not,” he all but purred.

He maneuvered her into position, holding her hand aloft with one of his own while the other slid around her waist to her back. Nervous Mickey Cortez had made a fumbling attempt to feel her up at this point, but Barnes was not after a quick grope and run; he let the opportunity pass and kept his hand respectfully on her lower back. As it was, his hand pressed into the thin silk fabric was possibly the most intimate contact she had experienced with a man in well over three years. She was affected, and it was hella obvious. A lesser man, like Mickey, would have taken advantage, but no lips met hers, no body pulled tight against her. Much as she would have liked it.

“Step back,” Barnes instructed, breaking through her increasingly delirious thoughts.

The hand on her back directed her movements to the left or right as his fingers or the heel of his palm pressed into her flesh through her dress. His raised arm let her know whether the next step would take them backward or forward. Leading wasn’t the word for what he was doing. Conducting was more accurate.

“You are good,” she commented, smiling as he directed her around the pub in a graceful spin that would have made Fred and Ginger proud.  

“Thank my sister,” he grinned.

“I will,” she agreed. “What else did she teach you?”

“The Lindy, but I think we’ll save that for next time.” The prospect of another date thrilled her more than she wanted to admit. “What about those brothers? What did they teach you?”

Darcy gave the question some thought as he gave her a twirl. “How to punch without breaking any fingers. How to pick locks and hotwire cars.”

“Are you a delinquent, Miss Lewis?”

“Absolutely,” she smiled. She kept smiling. This was the closest she had been to her old self in a long time. She missed being able to talk about her family and friends, and talk she did. Bucky was more than willing to listen as she told him what little she could about her life ‘before the war’. He was impressed she had gone to college, expressed his admiration of her determination when so many women couldn’t be bothered or quit to get married.

“Maybe I’m not the marrying kind,” she suggested.

His face pulled down at the thought, but after a moment he shook his head. “I don’t believe that. Right fella came along...”

“When that day finally comes, we’ll see. Until then,” she sighed, “I’ll just have to make do with you, Barnes.”

“Bucky,” he corrected, the same beatific smile lighting up his face.

That smile lit his face when she saw him again the next day at 1300. Stark was there, nothing but crossed arms and scowling mouth as the man entered his lab. He was barely civil when Bucky approached, ignoring the hand offered in greeting and thanks, and speaking with little more than grunts as he clipped his words and used the briefest of sentences.

Darcy rolled her eyes and watched as Bucky demonstrated precisely what a gentleman was.  

Though she hadn’t read anything to support the idea, Darcy was labouring under the misapprehension that Barnes was something of a troublemaker. Maybe it was because of the biography she had read where the author wrote extensively on his childhood and how he had so often been in fights as a kid, but she had expected him to boast and strut his way through the lab, generally rubbing it in that he got the girl and Stark didn’t.

That didn’t happen.

Bucky carefully avoided Stark’s eye and was all politeness and deference to the man and his genius. He didn’t even make a show of greeting Darcy. She had never found humility so attractive in her life.

Ever the dutiful assistant, she trailed the pair around the room as Stark showed off his science and Bucky fawned respectfully. She jotted notes as they walked, writing down which weapons Bucky preferred and what he needed in his gear, adding a few details of her own – like his jacket needing to be blue – to ensure that the man before her would end up looking like the hottie from her history textbook. She wasn’t about to admit how much time she spent staring at Bucky’s photo instead of listening to Mr. Flynn, but suffice it to say that she had his uniform memorized long before she met Jane Foster and even considered the possibilities that wormholes might exist outside of Star Trek. Regardless of the conversation the two men were having, she knew exactly what to put on the official requisition forms.

When they broke apart, Darcy followed Bucky. The admiration in his eyes was enough to have her laughing; he was clearly star struck and generally awed by the brilliance of his rival.

“I didn’t think anything could beat that flying car,” he breathed.

“When it actually works,” Darcy agreed.

He offered that heart-stopping smile in return. “Will I see you tonight?”

“Damn right you will,” she grinned and wished she could have kissed him. Instead, she settled for giving his hand a clandestine squeeze and enjoying the show as he walked away. Damn his 1940s sensibilities; any man who strut like that had to kiss like a professional.

“You are making a mistake,” Stark informed her, all his barely restrained animosity coming out now in a bitter, angry tone. “He’s going to get killed in action, leaving you alone. Or worse, he’ll survive and expect you to marry him. Then what will you do?”

“Have some spectacularly gorgeous children, I expect,” she said with a wiggle of her eyebrows before collecting the items Bucky wanted.

“I’m serious.”

“Well, don’t be. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. “Lewis, I’m just looking out for you. Men like Barnes... they’re great for a while—“

“Speaking as one of his ilk, are you?”

Howard tailed her through the lab, dogging her every step insistently. “I’m just saying you’re not like other dames, you can’t just fall for some mook and let that be the end of it.”

“Sure feels like I can,” he commented blithely, though she knew some part of what he said was true. She wasn’t like Margery or Margo or even Peggy. One day, Stark would finish that equation. One day, she would be leaving this place. What would she do with a boyfriend or husband? She loved people too much to let them go. Hell, she flew across the Atlantic on her own dime to stick close to Jane for no pay because she was that attached to the woman. That wasn’t normal behaviour. She knew she had attachment issues.

As if knowing her thoughts, Howard said, “You’re not a normal dame, Lewis.”

“Way to flatter a girl.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” His hands were on her arms, offering a reassuring squeeze. “You’re special. Guy like Barnes, he won’t get that.”

Darcy flatly refused to hear the unspoken end to that sentence, the part where _he_ – he, Stark – would get it, did get, had gotten it some time ago. She shook off the comforting hands and went back to collecting the gear and guns Bucky had wanted. “Whatever. Not like I’m marrying the guy. He’ll be dead in a year anyway.”

“What? How could you know that?”

She levelled him with a hard look over her glasses. “He’s Captain America’s best friend since childhood. Do you honestly think people wouldn’t notice when he dies?”

Stark stood in consideration of her. Something in his posture and face made her think he could see right through her snark into the pain behind it. She had known all along that Barnes would die. It was a simple matter of fact. And a cold, hard, emotionless truth it had remained before he sent that smile her way, before he made her fall. Just last week, knowing his future had done nothing more than make her a little sad. Now, knowing made her heart ache.

“Lewis...”

“Nothing to be done. It’s got to happen. History, right?” she sniffed and put on a false smile. “Anything else, Mr. Stark?”

He took a step away, allowing her some breathing room, all the while watching her mournfully, his eyes studying her every move and expression. She hated when he was so obvious in paying attention to her; when he did, he always wore that same despondent look, like a child eying a toy he knew he would never be allowed to play with. “No, Lewis. I think you’ve got enough on your plate already.”

“Damn right, I do. Overworked and underpaid. For such a rich man, Stark, you are hella stingy,” she commented with false bravado and marched off to give the techs their orders.

She could hear him mutter a reply sotte voce, but didn’t bother asking for clarification. Things had grown so strange between them, she was afraid that, if he repeated himself truthfully, he might say something she was completely unprepared to respond to. It would come. One day. But for now, she was still just an assistant, and she wanted to keep it that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm going to start watching Iron Man on repeat so I can capture the totally-attracted-to-one-another-but-trying-so-very-hard-to-ignore-it dynamic Tony and Pepper have. Good plan?


	17. Lit Candle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stark is shaken, Darcy so does not fret and Peggy is overly observant.

There was an envelope on her desk when she came to work one morning. Lots of things found their way onto her desk during the course of the day; Howard wasn’t much bothered with the minutiae required to make his designs come to into being, so all the blueprints, notes and requisition forms necessary to making them ended up in her hands. That was normal. This was not. This had found its way onto her desk in the night, when the lab and office were supposedly locked and guarded.

Darcy considered the envelope – standard Army stock – and the lack of postage. The address, written in a precise cursive, was simply her name. Her real name.

“Stark, did you put this here?” she questioned, holding the envelope aloft for him to take responsibility.

“Why would I leave things on your desk?” he replied, snatching it from her hands and running a finger down the glued edge. He pulled the paper free, letting the envelope drop to the floor. Darcy retrieved it, turning the thing over in her hands. Written on the back, she saw a note which she had not noticed and which Stark had chosen to ignore.

_Open only if I don’t come back  
                                           --Bucky_

“Hey,” she called, realizing that Stark was halfway through what was probably a very heartfelt and personal letter but stopped mid-curse when she caught sight him. “Stark?”

“Yeah, I... uh... For you...” He pushed the paper into her hands and, for lack of anything else to do with the nervous energy, raked his fingers through his hair. “I’ll just... Shit, I don’t know.” He cursed once more for good measure then spun and hurried to the opposite end of the room. Even from that distance, Darcy could see his hands shaking and just how pale he had become in the time it took her to collect the envelope and read Bucky’s instructions.

She turned her attention to the letter. Through no fault of her own it had been opened. It couldn’t hurt to glance at it. Lip firmly between teeth, she glanced at the paper. The cursive of the letter was just as precise as on the envelope, beautifully formed loops and lines creating words like _grateful_ and _hopeful_ , _happy_ and _love_.

Her eyes became stuck on that final word. Love.

She hadn’t said it. Neither had he. They’d only been seeing one another just over two weeks. Admittedly, they had gone out to the Rose and Crown or the Scot’s Pony nearly every one of those fifteen days. In her right time, Darcy adhered to the Five Dates Policy on physical intimacy, and if she were in her right time Barnes so would have gotten lucky by now. This being the ‘40s and Bucky being the most gentlemanly guy she had ever had the fortune to encounter, they had only danced and shared a handful of rather chaste kisses. But there it was – love – written in a letter.

Her eyes flew from the word to those on the envelope, and she understood why he had taken the time to put on paper what neither had the courage to say aloud.

“Where did he go?” she asked, her voice thick.

“Poland, I think,” Stark replied, his own voice oddly quiet. “Look, if you want to take the day off...”

She folded the letter and placed it carefully back into the envelope before looking at him. “What for?”

“So you can... I don’t know... fret,” he finished lamely.

Darcy sighed. “Stark, I know they’re coming back. Nobody dies until 1944,” she informed him flatly. “And even if I didn’t know that, do I seriously look like a fretter to you?”

“No, you’re no fretter,” he agreed.

“So, back to work then,” she declared. “Unless you want to have a little chat about privacy and personal property?” Her smile was the terrifyingly large sort that he had learned to run from, and run he did.

“No, I think we’re good on that front, Lewis.” He threw his jacket at his desk and hurried from the office into the lab.

“Good, boy.”

Darcy set the letter in her desk drawer and got to work arranging orders to Stark Industries in the States and their local subcontractors for the more immediate needs. On her lunch break, she moved Bucky’s letter to a place of honor inside the small wooden chest in her room where other women might have stored their jewellery. Every night that week, just before she turned out the light and went to sleep, she brushed her fingers across the envelope, thinking of the few words she had gleaned from her brief glance at his letter. Really, she thought only of that single unspoken word, and just how much she wanted to hear him say it.

When Captain Rogers and his commandos returned eleven days after the envelope appeared on her desk, Bucky disregarded protocol and ran to the lab to find her.

“God, you are a vision,” he groaned and wrapped her in his arms.

Whatever snark she might have thrown at him under normal circumstances died on her tongue, too grateful to have him back in one piece, too wonderful was the feel of him around her. Whatever she might have said out loud, however hard she had pretended not to worry, she couldn’t help but wonder what shape Bucky would be in when he came home. Yes, she knew he would be alive, but her knowledge ended there.

“I missed you,” she admitted.

“I’ll make it up to you, doll,” he promised and kissed her, slow and deep and perfect in every way. 

“Damn right you will.”

“Assuming they let me out of the debriefing in time for a bath, I’m taking you out. Dinner, dancing, the works.” The smile that spread across his filthy and unshaved face warmed her down to her toes.

“The works,” she agreed, quite certain her 21st century definition was _very_ different than his and equally certain he would not complain when he realized it. She smiled at the prospect of seeing him naked, and offered him another kiss as her imagination ran to just how well-defined he was under all that carbon polymer.  

“Sarge!” Dum-Dum shouted from the door. “Your girl ain’t going anywhere. Let’s go.”

Bucky offered a groan of protest.

“He’s right, you know,” Darcy said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Still can’t figure out why not,” he replied.

“Liar.” She smiled and pushed him toward the door. “Dinner, dancing and the works won’t happen if you get court marshalled. Go tell them how heroic you were, and do it fast.”

He offered a stiff salute and a cocky grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

She watched him all the way to the door before turning back to her desk, where a thoroughly disgruntled Howard stood, face drawn and arms crossed tightly across his chest. “What’s your problem now?”

The muscles in his jaw worked as he silently ground his teeth before hissing out a reply. “You _know_ what my problem is. You just won’t listen to me.”

“That’s because you’re being stupid.”

“I’m a genius.”

“Not with humans. With humans you are decidedly moronic.”

“Only with you.” His response was muttered so low she nearly missed it. Quiet as they were, the words were so full of despondence and self-accusation that she didn’t trust herself to answer. Despite what she felt for Bucky, that growing connection with Howard hadn’t faded; when they stood like this, close, alone and with emotions running high, she still felt the terrifying pull toward him that had hit her so hard back in November.  Falling for someone else should have doused that flame, but it seems she simply lit a second candle inside herself.

Howard stared at her a moment, swaying so close that she was sure he would try to kiss her, but the man tore his eyes away and cleared his throat. “So, the carbon polymer jackets seem to have held up. No one died.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her voice as strained as his.

“Let’s go ahead and order spares for—“

“Already done.”

He smiled, though didn’t look at her as he did. “That’s my girl Friday.”

She pointedly ignored the thrill that ran through her when he called her his. “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

“Yes, Miss Lewis.”

Files clutched to her chest to disguise the quaking of her hands, she walked with as much purpose as she could toward the door and away from him. She stole through the bunker, her speed growing as she moved until she was all but running through the corridors, past the MPs, up the stairs and out into the open air.

“Oh, shit,” she sighed after taking in a shaky breath.

“Problems?”

Darcy spun at the sound of the welcome and familiar voice, releasing a laugh so painful she thought she might spit up a razor blade along with it. “You have no idea.”

Peggy considered her carefully. “I believe I can guess.”

“God, I hope not.”

“Howard?”

“Shit.”

“Pub,” the woman said, taking her arm and pulling her down the sidewalk. She didn’t say a word until they were sitting together at a small table with a pint of dark stout before each of them. Darcy ignored the early hour, the classified files she had accidently carried with her from the bunker and the woman’s curious glance and took up the heavy stein to down half the beer in a single, breathless chug. “Things that good, eh?”

“That good,” Darcy agreed.

“So, you’re starting to like Howard,” she stated.

“Trust me, it wasn’t a conscious decision.”

“No, you seem far too clever for that. Aren’t you with Sergeant Barnes?”

“Yes!” Darcy cried, throwing herself down on the table, screaming her frustration into the varnished surface. “I like him. He’s sweet and gorgeous and perfect and everything un-Stark-y, and he is so getting lucky tonight. But I can’t stop these redonk feelings whenever I look at that stupid moustached face. It makes no sense. I want to kick him in the balls half the time. He’s probably got eighty illegitimate children running around the world, and if he hasn’t contracted syphilis at least five times by now I’d be surprised.”

“Only five times?” Peggy quipped, a perfectly plucked eyebrow rising in jest.

“Wishful thinking?”

The woman laughed. “If I might ask, why do you spend so much time with him?”

Darcy paused. Even with the buzz of alcohol dulling her filter, she knew there was only so much she could tell someone like Peggy, someone cunning enough to work between the half-truths, someone who spent enough time abroad to know that Darcy’s quirks were not normal even for an American. “We’re partnering on a secret project.”

She nodded her understanding. “So Howard is the only person you can discuss it with.”

“Exactly. And it’s a really important project for me, extremely personal.”

“Is there no one else you can discuss it with?”

Darcy sighed. “Not without them thinking I’m crazy.” She pouted into her stein of beer as she considered whether Bucky would handle the truth. It wasn’t as if she’d have to worry about him taking advantage of the information she could provide. Maybe after a few more weeks, she might start hinting about what made her so very eccentric.

“Well, I for one am in no way judgemental,” Peggy informed her. “If you need someone other than Howard to confide in, I’m all ears.”

“Yeah, but you’re also sworn to uphold truth, justice and the SSR way, so you might feel compelled to use this special personal experiment of mine to that end.”

The woman’s stein landed on the table with a heavy, disapproving thud. “I resent that. I may work for the SSR, but I have never offered blind, unquestioning devotion to anyone, least of all a government agency. It’s precisely that mentality that lead to Nazis taking hold in Germany and to Schmidt recruiting followers to his rogue science division.”

“Okay, you’re an independent, forward thinking woman,” Darcy declared, hands raised in surrender. “Your bosses are not. They are stupid, single-minded men, who have only one goal in mind.”

Peggy huffed. “That they are.”

“Men,” Darcy grunted.

“Men,” the Brit agreed.

“Gotta admit, some of them are mighty nice to look at, though.” Darcy grinned and nudged her with an elbow. “Tell me you haven’t thought about Rogers. Go on. I dare you to lie to me.”

“Oh, stop it.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I still only have about 600 words of chapter 20, some of which have left me stumped, which means I'm taking it in the wrong direction and need to work on it. However, with Winter Break skirting the horizon, I'm certain I'll have the time and inclination to get this fictional ball rolling good and proper once more.


	18. The Works

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a date does not end as either party had planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've just discovered [Kris932's Darcy/Howard fic ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3822868/chapters/8523856)with a crazy long title. Amazingly, it wasn't on AO3 when I started hunting down this pairing. Good thing, too. If I'd found it, I would have been content to read that and never have bothered writing this. Sometimes two ships passing in the night can yield excellent results!

The pub was quiet that evening, an air raid earlier in the day had kept most of the regulars boarded up in their homes. The piano was silent. The only other customers were mourning the loss of their flat to a fire from a bomb falling three days earlier, so she and Bucky were sitting close together, all but whispering their conversation.

“Becca came stomping up the stairs, threw the door open and started screaming at me in Chinese,” Bucky laughed.

“Do you even speak Chinese?”

“Enough to know she was shouting an order for wonton noodles and orange chicken. Apparently, Steve told her it was curse words.”

“Steve? Captain America Steve? Shut up! No way!” Darcy couldn’t quite contain the snort, which, naturally, only made her laugh all the harder.

Whatever Bucky was about to say got lost when the barman slammed a crate down. Bucky’s relaxed manner shattered, and his whole body began to shake, his eyes grew vacant as he stared around the pub for signs of danger. Darcy knew the signs of Post-Traumatic Stress. She had been there herself, secretly breaking crayons in the safety of her closet after the Destroyer came to town. She had seen Tony manically pacing their R&D floor at three in the morning when she stayed late with Jane, held Erik when he hyperventilated after New York.

“Hey, you need to talk about it?” she asked, giving his hand a firm squeeze.

“No,” he said in a distant voice. “No, nothing to talk about. I’m fine.”

She held his hand a little tighter, enough to have his eyes turn away from unseen ghosts and look her way. “Okay. But, if you ever did want to talk about something, I am one fantastic listener. I only interrupt a little bit.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, taking up his beer with his free hand and leaving the other in her grip. “What were we talking about?”

“You were just destroying the image I have of Steve as America’s Golden Boy.”

He grinned, though it was a shadow of the effortless smile that had graced his face minutes before. “Oh yeah. His favorite hobby is picking fights he can’t possibly win,” he paused. “Guess he can win them now.”

“Were you his hero?”

“Every damn time since we were seven.”

“What’s _your_ favorite past time?”

His face paled slightly. “It used to be science.”

“You science?”

“I used to,” he said quietly, his grip on her hand tightening. “I went to that Expo in Queens night before I shipped out. It was...” He breathed in the remembrance of the exhibits and possibilities, wonder taking over his haunted face. “And Stark’s gravitic-reversion technology. It only worked for a minutes, but it’s amazing.”

Darcy considered him for a moment. “What night was that?”

“April 30th,” he answered without pause. “Why?”

“I was there, too. I was one of the girls on stage.”

His smile dropped. “You weren’t the one who took his hat, were you?”

Her mouth pulled into a frown of her own, not sure why it would matter if she had taken Stark’s hat until she remembered that Allie had been the one to take his hat and his mouth, giving Darcy time to slip her phone into the man’s pocket. “No! Definitely not. That was Allie. I was the one with the faulty jet pack.”

“If you had been , you know, that girl... I know I couldn’t compete with Stark,” he sighed, something of that vacant thousand-mile stare returning. “I remember seeing you on top of that Jeep and thinking you were searching for someone.”

“You saw me?”

“How could I miss you?” he said, those far away eyes turning to study her face. “I thought it was a dream, Steve coming for us. I didn’t believe for one minute that I was actually out of that place, but then I saw you. I’d never seen any woman in real life that looked like you. If it was a dream, I knew you would be there searching for me, that you would fall into my arms and kiss me. But then, you were in Stark’s, flushed like you had been kissing him. I thought you were his.”

“Nope. I belong to no one but myself,” she insisted.

“No, seeing that made it real. It proved I was really out of that chair and away from Zola,” he shivered at the name. “I knew it was real because a dame like you could never be with a lunk like me, but now you’re here telling me you’re mine. I can’t help think it’s all a dream after all.”

“What would it take to prove it?” Darcy questioned, knowing what most guys of her former acquaintance would say. Also knowing that if anyone other than Bucky suggested it, she would tase them in the ball until they were sterile.

Bucky, however, did not suggest they get naked.

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Every night I lie awake, afraid that if I close my eyes this will all turn out to be a dream, and I’ll be back in that nightmare.”

She nodded, offering his hand a squeeze. “We’ll think of something.”

And think of something she did. Her original plan for the evening had always involved the addition of one James Buchanan Barnes to her bed; she simply modified that plan from a naked and moaning Bucky to one that was cuddled and sleeping soundly. The naked and moaning would come later, after he was well-rested and one hundred percent convinced she was real.

After a lingering kiss outside her door, he pulled away.

“Goodnight,” he said, turning to leave but finding his fingers still laced in hers. He looked back at her, confusion clear on his tired face.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Darcy questioned, opening her door and pulling him inside.

The overhead light flickered before glowing to life, throwing yellow light on the room that was now all hers after Margo finally broke down during the bombing three days earlier. Darcy had pushed the two narrow beds together into one; not that she had been anticipating having company, she just preferred a wider bed.

“I couldn’t,” Bucky hedged, swallowing hard as he eyed the bed large enough for two.

“You can, and you will,” she disagreed, easily loosening his tie while he stood spellbound by the bed. “You need someone to reassure you that this is no fantasy. I am the perfect candidate. Shoes off.”

He complied, not in the overly eager manner of a man desperate for a woman but the dazed zombie-like state of a man ready to follow any order put to him.

She pulled his jacket off and set it on her trunk before considering his pants. “Best keep those on, I think. Wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

Bucky offered a breath of a laugh. “What idea might that be?”

She just smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

She strut from the room, closed the door behind her, then raced to the washroom and through her nightly routine. It normally took her twenty minutes to remove her makeup, take her hair down and give herself a bird bath in the sink of the communal washroom. Today it took five.

“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any prettier,” Bucky commented when she returned.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she smiled. “Close those eyes, please.”

He obeyed, though she was sure he snuck a peek as she slid out of her dress and rolled her stockings down her legs. His eyes were firmly shut when she turned around and joined him under the covers.

“Safe to open them now?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Also safe to wrap and arm or two around me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

His arms encircled her, very deliberately avoiding anything she might deem as too forward, which was quite laughable given that he was in her bed.

“I remember looking at your picture and thinking you were a bit of a womanizer,” she commented, pointedly leaving out the part where the picture was in a history textbook that wouldn’t be printed for another sixty years. “I guess things aren’t always what they appear. Two people in bed together, for instance.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he offered a smile. “I think that might be exactly what it looks like.”

“And I think that’s some wishful thinking.”

“Yes, it is, but doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” He pulled her closer still and took her mouth, his lips soft and insistent, his tongue begging for entry, which she was happy to allow. She felt like a teenager again, laying in bed, fully dressed and making out, worried someone would come knocking but also a little thrilled at the idea. Very soon, she realized he was just as excited.

He broke from her lips, breathing hard. “We should stop.”

“No, we shouldn’t.” She was on him, kissing him hard and raking her nails across his scalp, pulling his groan into her mouth, feeling just how eager he was.

“We definitely should,” he insisted, holding her tight to his chest. “We’ve had too much to drink.”

She scoffed, though she knew he was right. Her head felt like it was floating, and she had earned herself half a dozen bruises on the walk back from the pub despite having Bucky there to catch her. She frowned, remembering how steady he was, how precise his speech was, how completely un-drunk he seemed even after two rounds of Shot ‘n’ Beer Checkers. “You drunk?”

“No, but you are. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Why are you not drunk?”

He shrugged.

“You’re not even going to have a hangover in the morning, are you?”

She felt his laugh reverberate through her entire body. “Probably not.”

“I hate you a little bit right now.”

“I’ll make it up to you next time.”

“Ooh, I like the sound of next time.”

“You should. Next time is going to be fantastic.”

She smiled into his chest. “Sleep now. Fantasize about next time later. ‘kay?”

“I think I can manage both with all these curves in my arms.”

“Flatterer.”

His lips brushed her ear as he whispered in a low, deep voice, “I was told it would get me everywhere.”

The whine that escaped her would have been embarrassing if it wasn’t twinned by a desirous keening from him. She shifted against him, hooking a leg over his hip, feeling every inch of him pressed against her, pulling a groan from him as she rutted against him.

“Darcy, if we keep this up, Steve will kick my ass for mistreating a lady.”

She stilled, though not without effort. “Fine.”

“Next time,” he promised. “When you aren’t drunk.”

“Fine,” she muttered again petulantly.

“Good night, sweetheart.”

She mumbled a response into his chest and closed her eyes, basking in the warmth of him, the solidity and weight of him. To date, all her boyfriends had been lanky and thin, geeky, artsy types more in line with pre-serum Steve Rogers. She had never shared a bed with someone like Bucky, someone strong enough to pin her in place and keep her from hogging all the blankets and from rolling dangerously close to the edge. It was comforting.

That was, apparently, not a sentiment shared by Bucky, who shot awake just after two o’clock. His scream woke her instantly.

Normally, when rudely awoken at stupid o’clock in the morning by her phone or the neighbor’s dogs, especially after a night of too much drink, her brain would stutter and struggle to understand what was happening. After two extremely violent incidents, however, Darcy was well acquainted with surprise PTSD attacks at rude hours, and reacted instantly, wrapping Bucky in her arms and whispering soothing nonsense noises against his ear. He thrashed and cried and nearly threw her off, but when it came to mothering the mentally traumatized, no one could beat her stamina. Minutes passed, but Bucky’s shouts finally settled into a heart wrenching sob. The fingers that had been clawing at her forearms now gripped them like a lifeline.

“Just a dream,” she promised. “You’re safe.”

“You’re bleeding,” he said, voice thick with terror and apology.

She snorted. “And I have a bruise the size of Cincinnati on my thigh where I fell into that set of stairs last night. I’ll live.”

“I hurt you.”

“Shut up, Bucky.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He complied, saying nothing as the clock marked the passage of time with an insistent and comforting ‘tick’ with each minute. She counted the beats of his heart along with the sound, noting as the erratic, panicked rhythm slowed into a steady, reliable double thump. When he was calm, she finally spoke again.

“You want to talk about it now?”

 Something like a laugh escaped him, though it was more ragged than she would have liked. “I can’t help thinking about what they did to me. All I can see is that red face whenever I close my eyes, and I’m terrified I’m going to turn into that.”

“I suspect that even if you did, you would still look mighty fine,” she offered with a smile.

“I was thinking more the lunatic murderer part.”

“Well, I will have you know that I have done extensive reading in regards to Johann Schmidt, and I can assure you with one hundred percent certainty that he was a lunatic murderer well before he stole Dr. Erskine’s serum. You think a man makes it that high in the Nazi ranks without being a psycho killer? _Please!”_

“You sure?” he questioned, his voice so plaintive that she was certain her heart broke a little more for him.

“Honest Injun,” she said, holding her hand aloft as if swearing in court. He gripped her raised arm and tugged it back in place around him.

“There’s more to it than that. I can’t get drunk anymore,” he whispered. “I used to be such a lightweight. One beer would have me on my ass, but now I drink and drink and feel nothing. Before we shipped off to Poland, Morita stabbed me when we were sparring. It was an accident; he just slipped and got my hand. He didn’t realize it, and I didn’t say anything. I should have been out of commission for a month, but it healed in two days.” He stopped, heart raging in his chest and sucking in a desperate breath. “They did something to me.”

“Yeah, they did,” she agreed, knowing a contradiction wouldn’t help him. “They gave you the works.”


	19. Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve is weird, Stark is murderous and Bucky is far too sexy for Darcy's own good.

Chapter 19: Everything

Bucky was slow to go back to sleep after his night terror. Perfectly understandably, really, so she hugged him tightly, whispering into the darkness every harmless thought that entered her brain. Slowly, heartbreakingly slowly, he stopped shivering and relaxed in her arms. By five, he began to snore. Her arms ached, especially where he had gouged her. Her legs were starting to go numb sitting in the same position so long, but sit she did. She sat upright, arms encompassing him until a knock came at her door.

It was quiet; the kind of knock a person gives when pretending to offer warning just to make themselves feel better. Half a second later, the door swung open.

“Cap,” Darcy said quietly, startling the man sticking his head into her room.

“Ah, uh, good morning,” he replied awkwardly, his cheeks going pink at being caught and turning a darker red when Darcy shushed him for talking so loud. He continued in a whisper. “Sorry, I was looking for Bucky.”

“I figured,” she replied in a low voice, nodding toward the man in her arms. “It was a rough night.”

“Need me to call the medic?”

“We’re good. I’m a boss at dealing with the traumatized,” she grinned proudly. “Compression therapy works every time.”

He gestured to her arms. “I meant for the scratches.”

“It’s only a flesh wound,” she insisted in her best Black Knight impersonation, knowing the reference was lost on him but determined to find the humor where she could.

“You can let go,” Bucky mumbled.

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Trust me, you want to,” he insisted, untangling himself from her grip and moving quickly from the room.

“Was it something I said?”

“Bathroom,” Rogers said knowingly.

“Gotcha,” Darcy nodded, amazed her head was still attached and unpained after the amount of alcohol she’d consumed the previous night. The shot of adrenaline must have helped, she reasoned. “So, Bucky do that often?”

“Every night,” he replied, his voice still quiet.

Darcy frowned, but said nothing.

“I’m... I’ll just go...” the man stammered as he ran a hand through his hair and avoided looking at her. “Uh, thanks... for taking care of Bucky.”

“No prob,” she said, frown still in place as he closed the door. She glanced down at herself; the girls were fully covered by her extremely modest nightdress, her legs no more revealed than anything he dealt with during his time as Captain Booty-Shorts. Considering the cramped space behind the theaters where he performed, she was certain he’d seen far more skin that she was showing off. She saw absolutely no reason for the man to treat her like she was indecent.

“What’s that look about?”

She looked up and found Bucky leaning on the door, smile on his face as if he hadn’t spent the night screaming and crying out his fears. It was unfair how good he looked.

“Nothing. Steve’s being weird.”

“He’s always weird around girls, especially my girls.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “Is that so? Jealousy, do you think?”

“Can’t see how. I’ve set him up more times than I can count. It’ll be a lot easier now he’s put some weight on. Then maybe he’ll stop treating me like shit for stepping out.” He stalked closer, eyes intent on her in a way that made her skin erupt in goosebumps. “That was not how last night was supposed to go.”

She swallowed, completely failing to bring some moisture to her barren throat. “How was it supposed to go?”

“With me kissing every inch of you.”

With a theatrical gasp and a wrist thrown delicately to her forehead, she breathed, “Am I to understand that ‘the works’ means our being _naked_?”

“Only if that’s what you wanted it to mean,” he said magnanimously, as if the idea of her wanting anything less was an impossibility.

She bit her lip, loving how gorgeous he was when he was this cocky. “And here I thought our meaning of ‘the works’ was very different.”

“You want the works to mean that?”

“Fuck. Yes,” she declared. “In every possibly sense and combination of those two words.”

His smile faltered slightly. “Even after last night?”

She shrugged. “Trauma don’t make you any less sexy, Barnes. Unfortunately, only four hours of sleep will have that affect on _me_ , so I need to go fill these bags with a crap-ton of makeup before facing the world.”

“You look gorgeous.”

“Flatterer,” she smiled.

“And we all know what that will get me.”

“The works,” she agreed, offering his cheek a kiss as she sashayed out to the washroom.

The damage was so much worse than she expected. Knotty hair and under-eye luggage were to be expected, but the bruises of her drunken trip back to the bunker and from fighting Bucky into submission were far worse than she expected. Plus the glaring light of the communal ladies room reminded her just how much she had to drink; apparently, a shot of adrenaline could only do so much and the inevitable hangover headache hammered in her brain.

Thirty minutes’ intensive work had her looking relatively normal. Someone with sharp eyes or someone who spent enough time in her company would easily tell how little sleep she’d gotten, but most of the people in the bunker would be none the wiser.

“Pretty okay,” she declared and returned to her room.

There was no Bucky waiting for her. His shoes were gone from beneath the bed. His clothes were no longer piled on her trunk. She dropped onto the bed, which he had made before leaving, and wanted to cry for the emptiness. The sharp warning call of the bugle reminded her of the hour and forced her to shove the melancholy of her future loss away. Bucky was still here. Damaged and terrified, but he was alive.

She stood and forced her hands to stop shaking as she put on her clothes. It was when she was checking herself in the tiny mirror propped on her washbasin that she saw the note. It was short and written on her own stationary.

_See you tonight. Remember: the works.  
                                                           --Bucky_

The turn-of-the-21st-century standards with which she was raised told her that the butterflies in her chest and the way she wanted to swoon was wrong, that she was strong and empowered, that she should be in control of herself when dealing with men, to use her head not her heart. Basically those standards could go fuck themselves as far as Darcy was concerned. She loved Bucky. Really and truly. She knew it was stupid, that she was walking into a relationship without a future, that she was setting herself up for nothing but heartache. She didn’t care. Bucky was her everything. It might have started as a means of escaping Howard, but it turned into something so much more.

Reveille called through the sound system, shocking her from her thoughts with its cry for everyone to get up. She put Bucky’s note into the wooden chest along with his letters, checked her appearance one last time and strode out into the bunker with a smile, knowing whatever the day brought was worth the promise of the night that would follow.

“Someone looks pleased with herself.”

Darcy let her smile grow into a grin as Peggy joined her in the Mess for breakfast.

“Have a good night’s sleep?” the woman inquired innocently.

“You play much poker?” Darcy inquired.

“Not recently, no.”

“It shows. That is one shit poker face you’ve got there.”

Peggy rolled her eyes. “As you say. Now answer the question please.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll give you a biscuit.”

“Sold!” Darcy cried and snatched a cookie from the woman’s plate. “Barnes took me dancing.”

“That is not news.”

“We had dinner.”

The woman’s face split open in a huge and mocking yawn.

“I got extremely drunk and pulled him into my room.”

Peggy frowned.

“At which point, Bucky showed off how much of a gentleman he is by refusing to let me have my way with him. I was very disappointed.”

“As would anyone be,” she agreed. “However, I am quite pleased by his conduct. I’ll have to give him a biscuit, too.”

Darcy gasped. “Don’t you dare! He only gets biscuits from _this_ girl! He’s my fella. Go get your own man to throw your cookies at. Hussy.”

Peggy snorted, which only made them laugh all the louder, earning the attention of quite of few people nearby. As their noise petered out, her expression shifted into concern. Darcy expected some sort of lecture on being careful and ladylike conduct, but that wasn’t what met her ears. “You are looking a little worse for wear, I’m sorry to say. Did nothing else happen last night?”

“Personal things that I do not care to discuss,” Darcy said, blotting at the heavy makeup under her eyes with a delicate finger. “Let’s just say not everyone made it out of Austria in one piece despite outward appearances.”

She nodded her understanding but said nothing more on the topic.

They spoke only polite small talk after that, not out of awkwardness but out of silent agreement that something as heavy as the trauma of shellshock ought to be followed by something airy and light. Darcy enjoyed it – the mindless banter – all the way through breakfast and through the corridors until she offered Peggy a ‘see ya’ and entered Stark’s office.

The man himself wasn’t up yet. From what Darcy heard and had seen, Stark had just begun his second round through the women of the bunker and probably had a late night with Margery. While she couldn’t really judge the women considering her growing warm-fuzzies for the man, she couldn’t help feeling they had to be either desperate or masochistic to agree to a second affair with him after knowing he’d been with every attractive woman working in the bunker. Every woman except Darcy, that is.

She started work, collecting progress reports on the current projects and making a list of all materials and parts necessary to their completion. She was just finishing the appropriate requisition forms when Stark finally came into the office.

“Morning,” she said absently, double checking the parts lists against the form to make sure she didn’t mess it up. It took her a moment to realize Stark hadn’t replied. She glanced at him over the top of her glasses, able to see enough to know he was staring at her. “What?”

“What happened?”

She looked around at the office, her desk, his desk and drafting table. Nothing was out of place. “What are you talking about?”

Howard raced around her desk, taking her arm in his hands, gesturing to the bandages wrapping it. His free hand took hold of her chin, pointing it up and into the harsh glare of the overhead light. Of course. Ass hat couldn’t remember her name, but he could see through five layers of foundation, concealer and powder to the sleepless shadows beneath.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“None of your business.”

“None of my business?” he repeated angrily. “I—You’re my—I’m your—! What did he do to you?”

“Nothing unfortunately,” she sighed.

“Unfortunately?” he parroted disbelievingly. “I can’t believe you.”

“I know right. How could he say ‘no’ to all this?”

“Lewis, stop it. I’m being serious.”

She sighed again. “I know, and I’ve already told you to stop. You aren’t my husband, brother, father, rabbi or anyone else who has any say in what or who I do in my room. You are my boss. Nothing more.”

He offered a curse followed by something muttered so low she was quite happy she couldn’t make it out before storming from the office and into the lab, where she heard a series of very loud and angry crashes and quite a bit of unintelligible shouting. Sighing, she pulled another requisition form from her desk and started filling it out, knowing which items in the lab were likely to make those particular breaking noises.

“He broke the new H4 prototype,” Andy called from the door.

“Well, that will be fun to explain to Phillips,” she groaned. “Idiot couldn’t have broken the H3.”

“The H3 got moved last night,” Stark said, his voice strained, as he walked back into the office. He took a moment to smooth his hair and tug his waistcoat back into place before approaching her desk again.

She held the new form out. “Did I miss anything?”

He glared down at the list of items he’d just broken. “No.”

“Will there be anything else, Mr. Stark?” she asked politely.

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winter Break is here. So far I've used it to write nothing! In my defense, I had to contend with nearly three months of crap that had built up in my living room -- that hurricane evacuation really knocked me around -- in order to set up my first Christmas tree in nearly 10 years. They're called priorities people! 
> 
> I'll keep the Bygone word file -- and the one for my newly shared Hacker!Darcy story, [ Circuit Board Snow White](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8900479/chapters/20397781) (go check it out) -- open on my computer to work on it every day during break. Scout's honor. :)


	20. A Goddess Among Lab Rats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone is all up in every else's business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put on a burst of writing and managed to type out three chapters yesterday. They need a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of editing/re-writing, but the bones are there.

Darcy strode from the office, trying very hard not to take Stark’s reaction to heart. She might as well have tried walking through walls; it would have been easier and probably had a higher likelihood of success. Still, she did her level best, walking with purpose down the corridors and directly into the chest of Captain Rogers as he moved with equal purpose around a corner.

It was like walking into one of the pillars supporting the roof and three-story building above, solid, immovable. She bounced off him and would have landed unceremoniously on her backside if his reflexes were slower.

“Gotcha,” he said quickly.

“Thanks, Cap.”

At the sound of her voice, his hands flew from her. “Miss Lewis. I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“No worries, Cap. I’ve barrelled into enough people down here. Karma finally caught up with me.” She gave his arm a reassuring punch.

“Right,” he said uncertainly, stepping further from her. “I’ll... I’m just going to go.”

She stood in his path, mirroring his attempts to walk around her. “Is there a reason you always run away from me? I know I don’t smell. I don’t think I’ve said anything too outlandish. So I’m stumped.”

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “You’re just Bucky’s girl.”

“Exactly! I’m your best friend since childhood’s fun and feisty new girlfriend. I’m awesome. You know you want to hang out with me. I know where Phillips hides the good cookies.”

He breathed a laugh, his shoulders shaking even as he tried to duck his head and hide his amusement. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t want you to get court marshalled for a cookie.”

“You speak wisely, Cap,” she agreed. “All right, I think you’ve interacted with me sufficiently for one meeting. I will keep this going. Don’t think for one minute you can escape me. If you hide, I will find you. If you run, I will send someone else to chase you because I’m not big on running.”

He released another laugh equally as small and unbidden as the first. “I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am.”

She stepped to the wall and let him pass, waving cheerfully at him when he turned and gave her an inscrutable look before disappearing into the War Room.

“That went well,” she declared to no one in particular and continued toward Phillips’ office.

Margery threw her newspaper down the moment she caught sight of Darcy. “You! You have been holding out on me!”

“I’m sorry?”

“I heard from Jimmy, who said he got the news from Lousia, who got it from Anna, who rooms with Laura, who said she heard from Lizzie that you spent the night with Barnes. Tell me I’m wrong.” Her eyebrow rose in challenge as her teeth raked over her bottom lip hungrily.

Darcy blinked one, twice, three times as she ran through the grapevine of scuttlebutt, which had lead to this woman being all up in her business. “Lizzie the Nutter who said Private Lupo stole her shoes or Lizzie who ran naked down the hall after she saw the tiniest spider ever on the ceiling?”

“Spider Lizzie,” the blond replied as if the answer were obvious. “Was she wrong?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that claim,” she smiled and set the stack of requisition- and order forms down atop the woman’s discarded newspaper before turning and sauntering away.

“You know that means ‘yes’, right?” Margery called after her.

Darcy just offered a cheeky grin as she rounded the corner. Once out of the woman sights, she slumped against the rough brick wall for support. She hadn’t counted on just how bored everyone was living and working in the close quarters of the bunker. Yes, there were the exciting moments that came with air raids and missions to destroy HYDRA bases, but the rest of the time it was nothing but dull paperwork. People were starved for gossip, and apparently she had provided everyone with plenty.

While she had spent enough time as an official 1940s person to know that she ought to be mortified, she had spent far more time reaping the benefits of Women’s Lib and the Sexual Revolution. She refused to allow her relationship to become a source of shame. She loved Bucky. If the situation was different, if he had a future, she would be looking forward to a Brooklyn wedding, a fourth floor walk up and 2.5 kids with Bucky. Since that wasn’t in the cards, she had to take what she could get while she could still get it.

Besides, she spent nearly all her time working with a man who slept with women as if it were an Olympic sport. She flatly refused to be slut-shamed when Stark’s behaviour was acceptable and even admired.

She gave her decision a hard nod of approval and marched back to her desk. Stark was nowhere to be found and, judging by the noises coming from the lab, every available grunt and tech had been called in to help repair the damages to the H4 before anyone had to tell Phillips what happened. Darcy forced all thoughts from her head about the reason why the entire lab had been turned upside down and went to work cataloguing Stark’s notes and plans. The handwriting was different, but it was so much like what she used to do for Jane that she was often at war with herself about whether this was the best or the worst part of the job. Today, it was the best, reminding her about who she had once been and the life she was working to get back to.

She worked through the day, copying, filing, typing and carrying reports. Stark never reappeared, much to her delight. Andy, however, provided her with a running account of the damages the man had done with his hissy fit that morning.

“How’s the H4 looking?” she questioned when he stepped from the lab shortly before quitting time.

“If we keep the Colonel on the left, he’ll never notice a thing,” Andy said with a nervous laugh as he tore the glasses from his face and polished the lenses on his grease-stained shirt.

“You want me to tell him?”

“Could you?” the man begged.

“Yeah,” she sighed and pushed herself away from her desk.

“You are a goddess.” He took up her hand and applied a whiskery kiss to the back. “We don’t deserve you.”

She blushed and said nothing as she made her way out into the bunker. The frequent lauding she received from Stark’s employees was definitely something she would miss when the time to leave finally came. Working with Jane alone in a lab, no one ever told her they appreciated what she did; more often than not, Jane would complain when Darcy organized and filed her notes, claiming there had been method to her chaos. Even Stark thanked her when she cleaned up his desk.

Margery gave her a knowing wink as she approached but verbalized none of her thoughts as the Colonel’s door was open.

“Is he free?” Darcy asked.

“Go right on in,” the blond replied.

Darcy tried not to let the woman’s stare make her skin crawl as she strode past her into Phillips’ office. “Colonel?”

“Lewis,” the man said, his voice as clipped and to the point as he ever was with her. “You never bring me good news.”

“That’s because everyone else is too scared to tell you the truth, Colonel.”

“Get on with it,” he ordered.

“The H4 was damaged this morning in,” she paused only slightly as she considered telling him the absolute truth, “a lab accident.”

He stopped at her hesitation, looking away from his maps and de-coded telegrams to watch her. At the lie, he nodded knowingly. “These accidents happen with far too much frequency after your dates with Sergeant Barnes. I suggest you find a way to keep Stark out of the lab and away from my weapons until he calms down.”

“Sir,” she replied tightly.

“Is that it?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Back to it, then,” the man said, waving his hand dismissively and turning back to his strategizing.

She offered his back a well-earned scowl before heading for the door. Familiar voices had her pausing in the doorway as they argued.

“—just dinner and dancing. Come on,” Bucky insisted.

She heard the long-suffering sigh before Steve replied, “I didn’t like going on double dates back in New York. What makes you think I’d want to go on one now?”

“Now that you’ve got a dame you’re sweet on, maybe you’d finally get what they’re all about.”

Steve opened his mouth to respond but stopped, his shoulders slumping down so low it looked almost painful. He shook his head. She could tell by the look on his face that Bucky meant to press him, and, while she was just as keen to understand why Rogers was being so stubborn in his refusal, she liked him too much to see him hurt.

“Bucky!” she cried.

“Hey, doll,” the man grinned. “Ready for our date?”

“Not yet,” she said, gesturing to her rumpled work clothes. “I hope you’re not trying to force Rogers into joining us. I know I talk too much, but that’s no reason to drag him along.”

Steve offered her the most earnest and thankful look she had seen him wear since they brushed shoulders on Brooklyn. She returned it with a small, knowing smile and a nod.

“I just thought he might like to get out,” Bucky insisted.

“I get out plenty,” Steve muttered.

“Running around Poland is not what I meant, you lunkhead,” he countered and punched his friend in the arm.

Darcy cleared her throat very pointedly. “Sergeant Barnes. You have been in my presence for two whole minutes and haven’t kissed me once. I’m beginning to get offended.”

“Can’t have that,” he said and leaned in to kiss her.

She pressed a finger to his lips and peered around his shoulder. “This is me giving you the chance to escape before he starts on that double date stuff again. Run while you can, Rogers!”

The man’s pinched mouth spread into a smile as he laughed. His narrowed eyes widened in surprise. She didn’t get the chance to ask or even wonder what his dissatisfied face had been about before Bucky removed her finger and kissed her. When she opened her eyes, Steve was gone.

“Sneaky.”

“I know,” she smiled.

“I’m trying to help him.”

“I know that, too.” She took his arm and started walking. “I know he’s your best friend. I know you share a deep and abiding bro-mance, but there’s no reason to torture him.”

A blush began to spread up his neck as she talked, one that didn’t stop as he insisted, “It’s a date. Not torture.”

“To a man who still sees himself as a scrawny nobody, yeah, it is. Anyway, have you already forgotten what this date is all about? I plan on making bedroom eyes at you all through dinner, groping your ass when we dance and playing footsy under the table. There is no room in a date like that for a second couple. Unless you want me to accidentally fondle his leg under the table instead of yours.”

The blush exploded across his face, turning him the most adorable shade of embarrassed she had ever seen. “Definitely not.”

“Well, good. Give me twenty minutes to tidy myself up, and I’ll get with the groping.” She kissed his scarlet cheek and hurried off to her room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered skipping this chapter altogether, but I thought it important to show that Darcy and Bucky aren't living in a bubble. Also wanted to show that Darcy isn't so much oblivious of Howard's feelings as she is willfully ignoring them. Success on both counts? Do let me know. :)


	21. Thrill of Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the works finally happen.

The noise started low, a mechanical groaning that grew into a steady whine. The air raid siren. Ten feet below street level, with a solid wall of concrete and lead between them and any potential falling explosives, Darcy had a hard time finding the sound anything more than annoying. Especially now that Margo wasn’t screaming under her blankets in the corner.

A pair of knuckles rapped out _Shave and a Haircut_ against her door.

She opened it to find Bucky standing outside. He offered a shrug and a cavalier, “Nazis. They sure know how to spoil an evening,” and held aloft what looked suspiciously like half of a bomb with leather handles attached. “I have a contingency plan.”

“Is that...?”

“The closest thing I could get to a picnic basket in our present situation? Yes, it is.”

She stepped aside and allowed him entrance to her room. “How did you manage picnic provisions on such short notice?”

He grinned. “Lizzie the Nutter is sweet on Steve. She hands him extra sandwiches every time he even looks at Mess. The chicken salad ain’t half bad, but her relish is worse than my sister’s.” He started emptying the makeshift basket, laying out the provisions with care on and around a starched white handkerchief with his initials embroidered in the corner. He held up a bottle, “Even got some booze.”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from commenting on how precious she thought he looked, all eager smiles and gallant effort.

Being careful not to dislodge anything, she settled down on the bed, accepting the sandwich he held out for her. Somehow she felt like he was offering far more than just a wedge of National Loaf with some chicken salad in the center. She tried not to dwell on it as she ate, though he didn’t make it easy. The giddy excitement rolling off him was infectious, and she couldn’t help but giggle whenever his eagerness got the best of him as he fumbled over his words or his fingers. Despite her modern sensibilities and all her experience with lovers, she had never felt this level of thrill before. Not even her first time groping awkwardly in the backseat of Pete Fallon’s car. Maybe it helped that she really loved Bucky where with Pete, and all who followed him, it was just mild like and being a dutiful girlfriend.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she declared, throwing the last of her sandwich down.

Bucky eyed her with a curiosity that bordered on caution. “It’s the relish, right?”

“No, it’s _you_ ,” she clarified, taking up what little remained of their picnic and tossing it haphazardly back in the general direction of the hollowed-out bomb. “You’re all handsome and adorable. I have to see you naked. Like now.”

She launched herself at him, giving him zero room for misinterpretation of her meaning or intentions. Her hands tore at his uniform, nearly snapping the threads holding his polished buttons in place.

“I feel like we ought to be moving a lot slower,” he hedged even as his hands went to work on her blouse.

“And I feel like we ought to be naked by now. Stop stalling.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he grinned and leaned in to kiss her, his fingers expertly extracting each cloth-covered button from its hole even as his tongue swept into her mouth. Those expert fingers went to work on her breasts, his thumbs sliding roughly over her nipples until she moaned in his mouth.

She couldn’t touch him enough, his muscles so hot under her hands. All her lovers had been scrawny, so easily manuevered around a bedroom, but not Bucky. He was solid and strong and moved only when he wanted, which is what he did now, pressing her into the mattress as his hands roamed her body.

“You sure I’m not dreaming?” he questioned.

“I’m starting to think I might be,” she replied in a breathless groan as his hands moved up her thighs. He unclasped her garters with practised ease, rolling her stockings down her legs and tossing them aside. He paused to admire her laid out on the bed before kissing his way back up her legs, his face vanishing beneath her skirt and lips laying light kisses along her thighs.

Darcy’s praise to the heavens that he knew about foreplay might have spilled out of her mouth as he kissed her sex through the satin knickers.

His mouth was hot and wet and perfect, his tongue probing through the fabric, making her writhe and whine. “Dammit, take the damn things off already!”

He reappeared from beneath her skirt, face flushed and hair sticking up in all directions. He offered her that boyish grin that never failed to make her knees wobble. “This is usually the part where girls tell me to stop.”

“Never going to happen,” she assured him.

As further proof of her investment in the night, she rose to her knees, offering his mouth a teasing kiss as her hands unclasped her bra and moved down to the zipper of her skirt. All the satin, silk and linen fell away, leaving her in nothing but a pair of ridiculously oversized underwear. She thought them hideous, but Bucky looked at the blue satin as if it was the most intoxicating thing he’d ever encountered.

“I’m definitely dreaming,” he declared.

“Then we should make the best of this dream, shouldn’t we?” she smiled and pulled him closer, feeling his heated skin against hers.

Apparently, that light touch was all it took. Darcy found herself back on the mattress; Bucky kissing and touching her with the kind of enthusiasm she hadn’t thought existed in men over the age of twenty. As he had promised, not one inch of her naked flesh went without attention. His tongue, she decided, was a national treasure, bringing her to the edge of release so many times she found herself begging for him, something she had never done in her nearly seven years of sexual experience.

For all this zeal, Bucky stopped short of entering her. He looked down at her, his skin flushed and shining with his efforts. “Can I?”

“God, yes!” she cried, wrapping her legs around him and drawing him closer.

The shaking breath he released spoke to how worried he had been she would tell him to stop, like all those other girls back home had done. She didn’t know how they had the determination to push him away. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. So long as he was here, she would want him.

She felt him, hard and practically scalding, against the lips of her sex. With a groan and a litany of curses that ran into a prayer of sorts, he pushed into her and then did nothing. He lay perfectly still, gulping in ragged breaths and huffing them out again.

“You know we’re supposed to move around a bit,” she prompted, jerking her hips and making him curse again.

“Give me a minute. I—You’re,” he swallowed down his words and pulled out slowly. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”

“Say it again, and I’ll make sure it’s true,” she breathed, tightening her grip on him until he cried out and collapsed onto his elbows, his face buried in her shoulder.

“Darcy, you’re killing me,” he groaned into her skin. “You have no idea.”

She didn’t answer, just let him find his rhythm, achingly slow to start as if he was afraid the he might break her. After what felt like an eternity of that teasing, torturous delicate motion, he started to move faster, his fingers digging into her hips as he earned his nickname and bucked into her harder, screaming her name and making her see stars.

“I’m sorry,” he groaned some minutes later, his voice both rough and soft. “I got carried away.”

She studied his face, her fingers reaching up to trace all the worried lines marring it. “You only get to be sorry if you never do that again.”

“Huh?”

“That was fucking epic sex,” she said, poking at his sweaty pectoral. “I will have more of it. Lots more. In five minutes if you can handle it.”

“If _I_ can handle it?” he scoffed. “I thought I broke you, all those noises you were making.”

“Not yet, you haven’t. I’m looking forward to you trying harder next time,” she grinned, knowing her lipstick was a mess and not caring one bit. He didn’t seem to care much either, taking her mouth and pulling her close until they were sliding against one another again, friction building as his thigh found its way between her legs. Twenty minutes later, they were breathless and flopping back down on the mattress once more. This time, Bucky had nothing but a smile on his face.

“How was that?”

“Still not broken,” she gasped. “I’m starting to think you’re not trying all that hard.”

“Give me a few minutes,” he breathed.

She laughed. “You know, you don’t have to do it tonight. There’s always tomorrow or the next day or the next. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But I am,” he said, smile falling. “Italy. We’re leaving at 1100 tomorrow.”

In the past, putting on a suitably worried face had taken a bit of effort; she knew Rogers and his Commandos would be back alive. After so much time in his company, it took almost no effort for concern to color her tone and put creases between her brows. She didn’t want him to go. Even knowing he would come back relatively unharmed, she didn’t want him away from her.

“How long, do you think?” she questioned tightly.

“If we’re lucky, two weeks,” he replied, not sounding at all convinced the mission would go as planned. “But I’ve been there. I know the terrain. It’ll probably be closer to a month.”

“Fucking hate Nazis,” she complained. “All right. Think sexy thoughts, Barnes. We are getting a month’s worth of sexy times into this night.”

“Way ahead of you, doll.”

He kissed her hard, his tongue mimicking the motion of his fingers as he brought her over the edge. Hours they spent making one anther moan and scream before they collapsed into a comatose tangle around two in the morning, so thoroughly exhausted that neither stirred until First Call blared through the speakers. Even that sharp bugle cry only managed to make them curse and roll closer together under the blankets.

Reveille followed five minutes later. It wasn’t enough to get either of them to anything more than blink at the ceiling with annoyance.

The hard, authoritative rap at the door, however, made Bucky stand at attention. “Shit,” he cursed.

“Whazzamater?” Darcy groaned.

“I’ll get court marshalled if they catch me in here,” he hissed, struggling to put his pants on while hopping into the blind corner behind the door.

“Yo, Sarge!” a voice shouted through the door.

His agitation dropped along with his pants as he recognized the speaker calling through the solid wood barrier.

Darcy wrapped herself in a blanket and stomped to the door, throwing it open and glaring at the body on the other side. He was nearly a foot taller than her, barrel-chested and muscular enough to take down a bull, but Dum-Dum Dugan seemed terrified of her. His hands even shook as he hurried to remove his hat. “Uh, ma’am.”

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“I need Sarge. We’ve got to meet Phillips in five minutes, ma’am.” He hesitated a moment. “Sorry about this, ma’am. I didn’t want to, but I drew the short straw.” 

Sergeant Barnes pulled the door open and stomped into the hall, fully dressed in his uniform. Dugan flinched at the hard look he sent him and hurried to mumble a second apology. Bucky offered her a smile and a kiss before shoving Dum-Dum down the hall and kicking him in the backside. Darcy grinned at their stupidity and closed the door, falling against it as her delight slipped away.

Another mission.

She had been stupid to think time would stop just because she and Bucky were together. He still had a job to do, one that would ultimately kill him in a few months’ time.

Rubbing furiously at her eyes, she glared her aggravation at the room, noting that Barnes had taken the time to throw the bed together the best he could. While he was at it, he had deposited an envelope on her pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that there is a reason why I rarely write smut. Feel free to drop a line below to let me know if I did okay or if I really need to work on my smut-writing skills. 
> 
> Also, FYI, the next few chapters need a lot (read: a metric crap-ton) of editing, so there is a chance updates are going to slow while I sort out what the hell to do with them. I can't promise comments/reviews will make updates faster, but they might help motivate me.... hint... hint...


	22. Kismet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which thoughts are had, though Darcy would rather they not be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead!

He was gone. 

  
Darcy sat on the hastily made bed, holding the already too-familiar weight of the envelope in her hands. She brushed a thumb across the name written so carefully in that textbook-perfect cursive; the ink didn’t smudge, leaving her to wonder how long ago it had been addressed, when he had taken the time to write the words within, and if those words were like the few she had gleaned from that first letter. He had only just returned with the rest of the Howling Commandos from classified locations east of Germany, fighting Nazis and HYDRA. Had he carried this envelope with him, kept a candle lit in the dark, foreign countryside, risking their location and lives? Her heart beat all the faster as she thought of his words, of the one specific word neither of them had yet said, might never say, though not from lack of desire to. 

 

She pulled herself up and crossed the short distance to the box where that word was safely locked away, lifting the lid and setting this new envelope attop the first. They had met just one month ago, and she already had two love letters from the man. With barely over a year left to his life, she wondered how many more she might accumulate.

 

“Fucking Nazis,” she muttered and tore her eyes from the letters and the box that housed them. 

 

“Focus,” she told herself. “Must keep Stark from destroying more supplies.” 

 

With a hard swipe at her eyes and a determined nod of her head, she set about trying to make herself look like a woman who had gotten a proper night’s sleep alone in her bed. Given the two consecutive sleepless nights and the scuttlebutt already circulating through the bunker about her and Barnes, she had no hope of fooling anyone, least of all the man who signed her paychecks, but she felt as if she should put some level of effort into the task.

 

Mess was already closed by the time she managed to make herself halfway presentable. Feeling like death warmed over and looking little better, she glared at the empty room, her stomach grumbling its annoyance at the lingering smell of bacon and toast. The long night’s activities had left her starving, and she had hoped for some powdered eggs and boiled potatoes to be able to deal with Stark, his petty jealousy, and general asshattiness. At least Stark had a hot plate and percolator in the office. Coffee might not keep the hunger pangs away until lunch, but it was better than nothing. With thoughts focused solely on the hot, sweet coffee that awaited her and not on either of the two men in her life, she shuffled through the corridors to work. 

 

The office, just one set of double doors from the lab, had become familiar in the weeks she had been working there under -- scratch that!  _ with _ \-- Stark. She knew the layout, the contours of the ceiling, the odd bricks and uneven floor tiles, the sounds, the smells. Today, it was different. 

 

The techs were at work just past the thick doors; repairs were still underway on the H4, and she could hear the rivet gun hammering away at the not-quite-pristine aluminum. That and the shouted curse words were both familiar, but the stillness in the office was not. Normally, once the workday began, the lab doors barely had time to close before someone came running through them again, asking for blueprints, notes or supplies to be requisitioned. Though more than anyone it was Stark coming to her for assistance. Today, the doors remained closed, the office calm and smelling like the breakfast she had missed.

 

As she rounded the corner of her desk, she found the source of the smells. Set atop the stack of forms and files was a upturned bowl, under it a plate of eggs, potatoes and toast. A note tucked beneath had her surname in Howard’s familiar, messy scrawl. 

 

“You absolute ass,” she muttered, unable to keep the affection from her voice.

 

The eggs and potatoes were barely warm and toast burnt, but she ate anyway. As she did, she resolutely refused to think about that food as anything more than sustenance. To think about it any further would have left her feeling far more warm and fuzzy than she wanted to admit, because even if Stark had not gathered the potatoes and eggs himself, he had thought enough to have someone else do it, had worried about her, had known she slept in and the reason she had missed breakfast. To think such things and draw such logical conclusions would have whittled away more of the self-centered womanizer and revealed far too much of the lovable hero within, and Darcy could not have that. So she filled her belly with food and her head with nothing at all, though her heart still swelled regardless of her desires otherwise. 

 

“Maria,” a quiet voice called. 

 

“Yeah” sighed Darcy, sad to hear the false name again after a night of being herself.

 

“Looks like the H4 is ready for the Colonel.” Andy offered an oddly nervous smile as he held the door open for her to come see the results of their effort.

 

She followed where he led, observing the shining metal. She could identify every piece in it by name and requisition number, list how much of Uncle Sam’s money went into it as well as how many rivets they used in assembling it. More than that, she could say which of the technicians standing proudly back had labored close to nineteen hours a day for the past three weeks to bring Stark’s creation to life. 

 

“It’s beautiful,” she said and felt the collective relief in the room. Really, it wasn’t for her to decide, but she was the next best thing to having Howard when it came to approval. “Go take a break, boys. You earned it.”

 

She couldn’t help feeling like a proud mom as the men beamed at her and shuffled off to grab some coffee and sit for the first time in far too many hours. One figure was noticeable by his absence. 

 

“Where’s Stark?” 

 

Felix, the nearest tech, a recent Texas A&M grad who had been given an 4-F thanks to his excessive hypertension, offered a smile equal parts apology and relief. “Colonel Philips had him escorted out a couple hours ago.  Apparently, he’s not allowed back in for the rest of the day.”

 

“Really,” she said. 

 

Like Felix, she wasn’t sure whether she was pleased by the news. The results certainly were worth a smile; Stark hadn’t gotten to take his jealousy out on the H4 again, which did both Philips and Felix’s blood pressure a world of good. However, it meant that the Colonel was even further up in her business than she had thought he was, and she knew the old man was in there fairly deep. Bucky had been so worried about being caught in her bed, but clearly everyone, his fellow and superior officers included, knew precisely where he had been. It was enough to make her wonder if the mission to Italy had been brought forward just to keep them apart. She shoved the thought away. Neither she nor Barnes were anywhere near important enough to be worth that kind of effort. 

 

“Well, I’m not going to complain if it means finally moving this tub to the air strip,” she said with far more bravado than she felt. 

 

Felix offered a hearty nod before moving off to get what was left of the coffee. 

  
Without Howard to clean up after, Darcy had little to occupy her brain and hands, and the worry about Bucky out in Nazi-occupied Europe began to plague her thoughts. She knew, as she had told Stark and herself multiple times, that Steve and his squad would survive the mission, that each of them would live another year or longer, but that knowledge didn’t stop the concern about what they were facing. 

 

“I thought you weren’t the fretting kind.” 

 

Darcy glanced up from her work to find Stark standing opposite, looking every bit as exhausted as she felt, with hair and clothes askew. She would have thought him fresh from some romantic liaison, save than he would never wear such a thunderous expression after spending any length of time holed up in a closet with a woman. 

 

“I thought you weren’t supposed to come back to work until tomorrow morning,” she countered. 

 

“Maybe you haven’t heard, but there’s a war on.” He dropped a small stack of papers and napkins onto her desk, presumably notes and designs that needed cataloguing and sorting. “Someone has to keep Barnes alive.”

 

“Glad it fell to someone with half a brain,” Darcy said.

 

He offered a wan smile, one that hinted at how sorry he was for that very same reason. “Lewis, have you considered that you being here might stop him dying?”

 

“Don’t.”

 

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this Eistein-Rosen Bridge and all the things it implies, paradoxes and changes you’re making. It was bad enough when it was just me and Jarvis, but you’re in the center of a war, influencing things that matter. I wouldn’t have let Erskine pick Rogers if you hadn’t told me to do it,” he insisted, chasing after her as she attempted to flee. “Who would be out there now if you hadn’t done that?”

 

“Just don’t,” she warned, refusing to admit just how much time she had given up to these same thoughts, especially considering the conclusion she had been forced to draw.

 

She had been living and working among some historical and instrumental figures at a pivotal point in world history, yet  _ nothing  _ had changed. To date, all the events she knew were supposed to happen  _ had  _ happened, some because she had been there to make sure it did. Everything she knew about time travel, which admittedly came from movies and TV shows, indicated that something should have changed; like rings radiating out from a stone dropped in a still pond, those ripples should have washed across history. But they hadn’t. George McFly hadn’t grown a set; Bill & Ted didn’t get an A on their report; Pompeii wasn’t burning because everything was still exactly as she had known it. The only logic reason, horrifying as it was, was that she was supposed to be there; that history was as she knew it because her future had always been to go to the past; that the equation to send her home would be left as unfinished as Jane had found it in that box; that Tony would leave that box for Jane knowing she would use it to send the young woman who would become his mother back through a wormhole; that she was going to become Mrs. Howard Stark; that she had left two dollars and ten cents in her pocket along with walking directions when she put her coat into that box to start this cycle all over again. 

 

No, Darcy had spent incalculable hours thinking these thoughts, and she did not want to admit this truth to anyone, not herself, certainly not Howard. Let the past change. Let Howard finish the equations. Let some other woman birth Iron Man. That had been her decision.

 

“Lewis, can’t you just--” 

 

“Howard, please,” she interrupted, hating how desperate she sounded, “stop talking.”

 

He paused, mouth pulling into a frown as his eyes studied her. “You never call me that.”

 

“What?” she questioned, wondering what defamatory epithet she had thrown at him in her attempt to shut him up.

 

“Howard,” he repeated quietly. “You never call me that.”

 

“Well, it’s your name. Some people actually take the time to learn those.” She levelled him with a meaningful stare. 

 

The man bristled. “I learn them when they matter.”

 

“Sure you do,” she commented dryly and moved to finally escape his presence and the conversation. 

 

“I do!” he insisted, still following her. 

 

She shouldn’t have let him bate her, but she was tired and bordering on panic. “Yeah? You still can’t remember Andy’s name. Five years, he’s worked for you. And let’s not even get started on my name.”

 

He breathed a sad laugh. “Oh, Darcy, of course I remember your name.”

 

Despite the conflict of thought and emotions pulling at her with his words, all she could make her mouth say was:  “Oh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Completely insufficient apologies for the long, long delay. I quit teaching, got a new job in a new city. Lots of stuff all getting in the way and keeping my head and fingers from focusing on writing. Hopefully, that ends now. 
> 
> Sorry, if it's stilted and awkward, but I'm terribly rusty. 
> 
> Let me know what you think one way or another.


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